“A watch is a watch, Rosy,” put in the aunt, doggedly—“and time is time.—When it’s four o’clock at our house, it’s four o’clock at your aunt Sprague’s, and it’s so all over the world. The world may turn round—I’ll not deny it, for your uncle often said as much as _that_, but it cannot turn in the way Mr. Mulford says, or we should all fall off it, at night, when it was bottom upwards. No, sir, no; you’ve started wrong. My poor, dear, late Mr. Budd always admitted that the world turned round, as the books say; but, when I suggested to him the difficulty of keeping things in their places, with the earth upside down, he acknowledged candidly—for he was all candor, I must say that for him—and owned that he had made a discovery, by means of his barometer, which showed that the world did not turn round, in the way you describe, or by rolling over, but by whirling about as one turns in a dance. You must remember your uncle’s telling me this, Rose?” Rose did remember her uncle’s telling her aunt this, as well as a great many other similar prodigies. Capt. Budd had married his silly wife, on account of her pretty face, and when the novelty of that was over, he often amused himself by inventing all sorts of absurdities, to amuse both her and himself. Among other things, Rose well remembered his quieting her aunt’s scruples about falling off the earth, by laying down the theory that the world did not “roll over,” but “whirl round.” But Rose did not answer the question. “Objects are kept in their places on the earth, by means of attraction,” Mulford ventured to say, with a great deal of humility of manner. “I believe it is thought there is no up or down, except as we go from, or towards the earth; and that would make the position of the last a matter of indifference, as respects objects keeping on it.” “Attractions are great advantages, I will own, sir, especially to our sex. I think it will be acknowledged there has been no want of them in our family, any more than there has been of sense and information. Sense, and information, we pride ourselves on; attractions being gifts from God, we try to think less of them. But all the attractions in the world could not keep Rosy, here, from falling off the earth, did it ever come bottom upwards. And, mercy on me, where would she fall to!”