"It's a pity he didn't sit down on his boomerang infernal-machine, and then set it a-going: he might a been on the moon by this time, where the fool belongs, with the other lunatics. If he ever comes into my new ice-cream parlor--(twelve by sixteen, gas-lights, three tables, and six chairs; two spoons furnished with one saucer if desired, and a napkin for your lady free; ten cents a saucer, and ginger-bread thrown in)--why out he goes, too quick. Oh, he's a daisy, he is! If you ever want to remind me of him, anybody, ask me to lend you a dime; and when I shake my head and my teeth rattle, I'll remember the lunkhead, sure enough." I frowned down the youngster, for he had promised not to obtrude his opinion in the presence of Bainbridge. But as his words did not refer in any manner to the story that Bainbridge was telling us, I should not have objected to them, but that with Arthur it was necessary to be cautious in creating precedents, which, as I have intimated, in his case almost immediately congealed into vested rights; and our agreement had obligated him to observe complete silence on the subject of Peters' story, and, if I correctly remember--though Arthur denied this latter--on all other subjects, in the presence of Doctor Bainbridge. As Bainbridge appeared to have nothing further to say, and was making those slight occasional movements which I knew presaged his departure, I began to talk of Peters' leap; and in the most guarded manner--for with Bainbridge any question of the facts of his narrative required tact and delicacy to avoid the giving of offence--to discuss the subject of leaping in general, the facts and probabilities relating to distance, and the laws and conditions that might govern and regulate the running-leap. "Do you not think," I finally asked, "that Peters somewhat overestimates the distance of his marvelous leap? I am aware that Peters was, both in strength and in agility, almost preterhuman; but fifty feet or thereabouts! That seems scarcely possible. Our best athletes, I believe, have never, on level ground, made a running leap of much more than half that distance. Now forty feet, under all the circumstances, would not strike me as impossible, though thirty-five would better chime with my ideas of the probable, and thirty would remove all possibility of any draft on my credulity."