"And I can't conceive of their ways!" I interrupted flatly. "Hank, this is going too far! You admit we've been in the United States--all right, make it the North American continent if you want to!--all along. But we've seen men of a dozen different races, heard a dozen tongues spoken--" Hank scratched his head. "Well, now, Jim, I guess you know I'm not what you mought call a scholar. But I done read up a leetle bit about hist'ry. An' it 'pears to me like all them things we seen _could_ o' happened, if things had tooken jest the littlest bit of shift somewheres in the past. "Take that first city we seen, f'rninstance. Kinda funny, accordin' to American standards, I'll admit. But suppose the Greek Empire hadn't never fell? Ain't it plausible to figger as how maybe some day the expandin' Greeks might o' colonized America? They was a sea-farin' people, you know--an' great lovers o' beauty, Art and the social graces. But they was rotten bad scientists, f'r the most part. Seems to me like their civilization woulda reached a high peak, then never got no higher...." Helen, her fears assuaged by a reasonable explanation, nodded vehement agreement. "He's right, Jim. And those women _were_ talking in Greek--or at least a modified form of it. I remember, now, a few words--" "Them other guys," mused Hank, "them sojers, seems like they mought o' been Romans. They was great ones to let the conquered people work the fields for them, an' I noticed they had the Injuns on W.P.A. "But all them guys talking Dutch--I can't figger that. It ain't reasonable to suppose it would be on account of if Germany had won the first World War. Even if they did, they couldn't o' made the United States talk German an' act German in twenty-five years!" For once I knew more than Hank Cleaver! I gloried in my little instant. "I'll bet I know what 'moment in history' made that existence possible! Back around the time of 1776, Hank, the fathers of the infant United States gathered to decide which language should be the official tongue of their new nation. The choice was a toss-up between English and German. English became the official language of our country by the slim margin of _one_ vote--cast by a German-American who based his decision on the belief that English was the more pliable tongue!" * * * * * Hank smacked his hands together. "That's it, by gum! Purty nigh has to be! Now you see whut a diff'rence one little incident makes? If that man had voted f'r his native tongue, this country woulda become a lazy, self-contained Tootonic colony, 'stead of an up-an'-at-'em, commercial sea-power. An' them other places we seen--" It was easy now that we understood the system.