Figures--unassailable sums in
addition--shall be set over against whatever opposing element there
may be.
A mathematician, after scanning the above two lines of poetry, would
say: "Ahem! young gentlemen, if we assume that X plus--that is, that
life is real--then things (all of which life includes) are real.
Anything that is real is what it seems. Then if we consider the
proposition that 'things are not what they seem,' why--"
But this is heresy, and not poesy. We woo the sweet nymph Algebra; we
would conduct you into the presence of the elusive, seductive, pursued,
satisfying, mysterious X.
Not long before the beginning of this century, Septimus Kinsolving, an
old New Yorker, invented an idea. He originated the discovery that bread
is made from flour and not from wheat futures. Perceiving that the flour
crop was short, and that the Stock Exchange was having no perceptible
effect on the growing wheat, Mr. Kinsolving cornered the flour market.
The result was that when you or my landlady (before the war she never
had to turn her hand to anything; Southerners accommodated) bought a
five-cent loaf of bread you laid down an additional two cents, which
went to Mr. Kinsolving as a testimonial to his perspicacity.
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