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At the recent sessions of the American...

From the November 1884 issue of The Christian Science Journal


At the recent sessions of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, two well-known geologists referred to two fossil shells as found, sometimes, side by side in the same rocks. Thereupon the State geologist of New York, who had never seen those two fossils side by side in the same rock, and whose pet theory of geology would not admit the possibility of their being there, rose and dogmatized, in behalf of his theory, after the type of the narrowest theological bigot. "If any one will show me the two spirifers side by side in the same rock," he exclaimed, "I will sacrifice my life's work. I will give up my reputation, eat my hat, and make the person who shows me the rock a present of my coat and boots." Instead of dogmatizing on the other side, the defied geologist who was thus charged with geological heresy took the first train to his university, and shortly there came back a heavy box addressed to the defiant dogmatizer, containing a piece of rock with the two fossils imbedded side by side, and a note, reading: "The enclosed rock contains the spirifer disjuncta and spirifer mesostrialis side by side. You can have it. Please eat your hat, and send me your coat and boots by express."

Napoleon compared his mind to a case of drawers, each with its appropriate subject. "When I wish to turn from one subject to another," he says, "I close one drawer and open another. When I wish to rest I close them all and go to sleep. I stand at the gate-way of my mind, resolutely shut out every thought that attempts to enter, and succeed. When they find they cannot get in, they leave me."

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