As a matter of fact, dear old Washington-on-the-Potomac was beginning to look like an overgrown Midland U. campus. H. Logan MacDowell, president of the college, was here as a "dollar a year man"--and worth every penny of it!--while his charming daughter, Helen, Hank's fiancée, was working in the U.S.O. headquarters. "It ain't," complained Hank, scowling, "as if I was hard to git along with. Gosh knows I'm easy-goin' enough--" There was no gainsaying that. Hank was as mild and gentle as a Carnation cow. "--but he plagues me!" confessed Hank. "Disagrees with most everything I say. Spouts facts an' figgers at me, when he knows dingbusted well I can't understand that kind o' talk. My brain don't work thataway. I jest git the theories an' work 'em out by plain, dumb hoss-logic--" I said, "Well, what's the trouble now?" * * * * * Hank fingered a paper of cut-plug, tucked enough in his cheek to make him look as if he were munching on a medium sized billiard ball. This was his one vice. When he married fair Helen a few months hence, it would probably become _tabu_. Meanwhile, in the privacy of the apartment we shared, he kept his molars and incisors well lubricated. "Wa-a-all," he said, "it's time!" I stared at the clock. "Time? Time for what?" "Not that kind o' time, Jim. I mean the problem o' Time. Whut it is, and how you can shift around in it an' all that sort o' stuff." I said, "Oh. In other words, pal Jamieson has been making with the meta-physics, eh? On account of what?" "On account," explained Hank, "of I happened to say wouldn't it be swell if somebuddy could go backward in Time and do somethin' to stop the Nazi movement from ever gettin' organized. Then there wouldn't be no war like we're fightin' today." "That," I approved, "sounds like a swell idea. Go back and push a little paperhanger named Adolph Shicklgruber under a Munich street-car, huh? I'd gladly volunteer for the job--if there was any way of doing it." "So would most of us. Oney Jamieson," continued Hank, "'lowed as how it was impossible. He claims all this warfare and stuff is inescapable. Says the progress of mankind is foreordained, an' they can't nobuddy do nothin' to change it, ever. He says the Book o' Time was all writ up in advance, an' they wasn't no way to change it--" Hank squinted at me dubiously. "He quoted some pome out of a book called _The Di'mond Sailboat_, or somethin'--" "Sue me if I'm wrong," I grinned, "but maybe it was the _Rubaiyat_? By an old Persian named Omar? He wrote: _The Moving Finger writes, and having writ Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit Can lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears erase a Word of it._" "That's it, Jim," nodded Hank. "That's the poem he said. Well, I tried to reason with him. Told him he was all wrong. Things _couldn't_ be thataway!" I asked, "Why not, Hank? Lots of philosophers have reached the conclusion that existence is predestined."