The Wreck of the South Pole and Other Strange Tales — page 76: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Wreck of the South Pole. 69 matics, and the next one in philosophy. Then a line or so of poetry, and next a dip into morals and theology. They never could catch me. And then I had the pleasure of laughing at them the next time we met and pointing out a few mistakes they had made in their report to the chief. Oh, yes, this life of mine has had its relaxations, if it is a hard one. “Then, too, I have a contrivance into which I can retire whenever it is necessary for any prolonged thinking. I will show it to you.” Opening a door, he conducted me into a small room, and closing the entrance, bid me sit down. “This room,” he explained, “is thought proof. As you must have learned by this time, thought messages travel through a thin, imponderable ether, which fills all space; travels as sound and light do through air. Now, if you can create a perfect vacuum, there could be no sound. So, if you could create a perfect vacuum as to this ether of which | speak—and which I call ether, because there is no other name by which you would understand me as well— if we could create such a vacuum, then no thought could pass through it. This is one of my early inventions. There is a perfect vacuum all around this room, which is built of glass. Whenever I have a particularly: difficult problem to study out, I retire into this room. Then ‘my friends’ who are keeping tab on me to catch me, are dum- founded, for I have mysteriously disappeared ! “There have been many of these mysterious disappear- ances lately. When I retire into this room, not all the CORNIEOOOLKS (COLA)