only to shove the word why into another space, as ripples play with and toss a cork about. Why does the newly-born babe cry for food before its intellect has a chance for worldly education? Why--" "Stop," I interrupted; "these questions are absurd." "So some of your scientific experts would assert," he replied; "perhaps they would even become indignant at my presumption in asking them, and call them childish; nevertheless these men can not satisfy their own cravings in attempting to search the illimitable, and in humiliation, or irritation, they must ignore the word Why. That word Why to man dominates the universe. It covers all phenomena, and thrusts inquiry back from every depth. Science may trace a line of thought into the infinitely little, down, down, beyond that which is tangible, and at last in that far distant inter-microscopical infinity, monstrous by reason of its very minuteness, must rest its labors against the word Why. Man may carry his superficial investigation into the immeasurably great, beyond our sun and his family of satellites, into the outer depths of the solar system, of which our sun is a part, past his sister stars, and out again into the depths of the cold space channels beyond; into other systems and out again, until at last the nebulae shrink and disappear in the gloom of thought-conjecture, and as the straggling ray of light from those farthermost outreaches, too feeble to tell of its origin, or carry a story of nativity, enters his eye, he covers his face and rests his intellect against the word Why. From the remote space caverns of the human intellect, beyond the field of perception, whether we appeal to conceptions of the unknowable in the infinitely little, or the immeasurably great, we meet a circle of adamant, as impenetrable as the frozen cliffs of the Antarctic, that incomprehensible word--Why! "Why did the light wave spring into his field of perception by reflection from the microscopic speck in the depths of littleness, on the one hand; and how did this sliver of the sun's ray originate in the depths of inter-stellar space, on the other?" I bowed my head. [Illustration: DESCRIPTION OF JOURNEY FROM K. [KENTUCKY] TO P.--"THE END OF EARTH."] CHAPTER XLIX. OSCILLATING THROUGH SPACE.--EARTH'S SHELL ABOVE ME.[14] [14] For detail illustration of the earth shell, as explained in this chapter, see the plate. Continued my companion: