"But wait, wait," he pleaded, "wait for another fifty years--" "We will," we said, very earnestly, "but meantime as our paper goes to press this afternoon we must go now. In fifty years we will come back." "Oh, I see, I see," said the Professor, "you are writing all this for a newspaper. I see." "Yes," we said, "we mentioned that at the beginning." "Ah!" said the Professor, "did you? Very possibly. Yes." "We Propose," we said, "to feature the article for next Saturday." "Will it be long?" he asked. "About two columns," we answered. "And how much," said the Professor in a hesitating way, "do I have to pay you to put it in?" "How much which?" we asked. "How much do I have to pay?" "Why, Professor," we begin quickly. Then we checked ourselves. After all was it right to undeceive him, this quiet, absorbed man of science with his ideals, his atoms and his emanations? No, a hundred times no. Let him pay a hundred times. "It will cost you," we said very firmly, "ten dollars." The Professor began groping among his apparatus. We knew that he was looking for his purse. "We should like also very much," we said, "to insert your picture along with the article--" "Would that cost much?" he asked. "No, that is only five dollars." The Professor had meantime found his purse. "Would it be all right," he began, "--that is, would you mind if I pay you the money now? I am apt to forget." "Quite all right," we answered. We said good-by very gently and passed out. We felt somehow as if we had touched a higher life. "Such," we murmured, as we looked about the ancient campus, "are the men of science: are there, perhaps, any others of them round this morning that we might interview?" [signed]Stephen Leacock The Epic Standpoint in the War After more than three years of the War, we are only now beginning to see it, as it is, in its epic immensity. On the eastern front it has been too far from us; on the western front it has been too near us, and we have been too much a part of it, to get any sight at all of that series of monotonous and monstrous battles, a series punctuated only by names: Liege, Antwerp, Mons, Ypres, Verdun and Arras. And if nothing had happened besides the Titanic conflict of material armaments I believe that we should not yet be anywhere near realizing its vastness and its significance. If we are aware of it now it is because, in the last few months, three events have happened which are of another order: the abdication of Constantine, King of Greece, the Russian Revolution, and the coming of America into the War. These three events have adjusted and cleared our vision by giving us the true perspective and the scale. From the standpoint of individuals, even of those few who have lost nothing personally, who are alive and safe, who have never been near the trenches, never watched an air-raid, or so much as seen the inside of a hospital, the War is a monstrous and irreparable tragedy.