a large factory where
they made glucose by treating rags with sulphuric acid. A man of good
standing was this William T. Forbes, the father of two charming
girls--Miss Dorothy, called Doll, and Miss Martha, called Mat, who gave
the tone to the best society in Philadelphia.

It followed, then, on the proposition of Jem Chip, supported by
William T. Forbes and others, that it was decided to elect the
president "on the center point."

This mode of election can be applied in all cases when it is desired
to elect the most worthy; and a number of Americans of high
intelligence are already thinking of employing it in the nomination
of the President of the Republic of the United States.

On two boards of perfect whiteness a black line is traced. The length
of each of these lines is mathematically the same, for they have been
determined with as much accuracy as the base of the first triangle in
a trigonometrical survey. That done, the two boards were erected on
the same day in the center of the conference room, and the two
candidates, each armed with a fine needle, marched towards the board
that had fallen to his lot. The man who planted his needle nearest
the center of the line would be proclaimed President of the Weldon
Institute.

The operation must be done at once--no guide marks or trial shots
allowed; nothing but sureness of eye. The man must have a compass in
his eye, as the saying goes; that was all.

Uncle Prudent stuck in his needle at the same moment as Phil Evans
did his. Then there began the measurement to discover which of the
two competitors had most nearly approached the center.

Wonderful! Such had been the precision of the shots that the measures
gave no appreciable difference. If they were not exactly in the
mathematical center of the line, the distance between the needles was
so small as to be invisible to the naked eye.

The meeting was much embarrassed.

Fortunately one of the members, Truck Milnor, insisted that the
measurements should be remade by means of a rule graduated by the
micrometrical machine of M. Perreaux, which can divide a millimeter
into fifteen-hundredths of a millimeter with a diamond splinter, was
brought to bear on the lines; and on reading the divisions through a
microscope the following were the results: Uncle Prudent had
approached the center within less than six fifteenth-hundredths of a
millimeter. Phil Evans was within nine fifteen-hundredths.

And that is why Phil Evan