"I have an idea," Milton returned, "that there was no rest of him, that this head was all that was to be placed upon that pedestal." I suppose that Rhodes was right. One wonders what happened there so long ago, why the great caput was never raised to the place which they had prepared for it. No man can tell that now. All we know is that there the great head lies, that there it has lain for, in all probability, untold thousands of years. At last Milton Rhodes climbed up and stood upon the chin, in order, as he said, "to get a good view of the poor gink's phiz." And not only that, but he stood upon the poor fellow's nose; yes, he balanced himself on one foot on the very tip of it. I turned my look to the Dromans with some apprehension, for I did not know what superstitious ideas they might entertain, feared that to them this acrobatic stunt of Rhodes might be sacrilege itself. My misgivings, however, were groundless. The Dromans were delighted. They burst into merry laughter; they applauded vociferously. Even Drorathusa laughed outright. Little wonder, forsooth, for a pretty figure Milton Rhodes made balanced up there on the poor gink's olfactory protuberance. A fine posture truly for one of the world's (I mean, of course, our world's) great scientists; and I could not help wondering what certain dignified old fellows (Milton called them fossils) would have thought could they, by television or some miracle, have seen him there. And what would the Dromans themselves think? Well, I was glad when he came down and there was an end to that foolishness. And I put in a prompt remonstrance. "We," I told him, "have--or, at any rate, we _ought_ to have--a certain dignity to uphold. For we are the representatives, as it were, of that great sunlit world above, the world of Archimedes, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Humboldt, Darwin, Edison--not a world of Judys and Punches." "Aw, Bill," was the answer that I got, "now quit your kidding." I ask you this again: what can you do with a man like that? We soon quitted the spot. The light-cloudlets were all about us now. Some came slowly gliding, some crawling, along the floor; some along the walls and the roofs. Others floated along overhead or hung motionless in the air. The changes of form were sometimes very rapid and certainly as unaccountable as the masses themselves. Occasionally we would see a mass slowly take form in the darkness and as slowly fade into darkness again. Where did the light come from, where did it go? And the explanation of this uncanny phenomenon? Undoubtedly some electric manifestation, said Rhodes, analogous perhaps to the light of the aurora. That, I objected, really explained nothing, and Rhodes admitted that that was just what it did explain--nothing. Which reminds me of the beautiful eclaircissement which Professor Archimedes Bukink gave when the little girl to whom he was reading a fairystory asked: "But what is that flamingo thing?" "_Phoenicopterus ruber_," said Bukink!