A good many of the people here are of opinion that the Earth is flat; and I do not know of any simple and decisive way of proving it to be a globe. I failed miserably with Aristotle’s argument (_De Cælo_, ii. 14. 13) from the shape of the Earth’s shadow on the Moon in an eclipse. They very soon showed me that they could cast as round a shadow with a platter or a pail as with a ball of wool. And this, I imagine, was the reasoning of Anaximander and those others, who suggested that we might be living on the flat surface of a cylinder or disk. There is the Horizon argument; but that is not for people living in a region of high hills, where no horizon can be seen. And the Circumnavigation argument is answered in this way:--In thick mists on the moor you think that you are going straight on, but you always go round in a circle till you come back to where you were before. The other arguments are too subtle to be grasped at all. When people have come up for their first visit to London, I have seldom found them much impressed with the big public buildings. They have seen photographs, generally taken from some favourable point of view: so they know what to expect, and the reality is not always equal to their expectation. The buildings that impress them are the private houses at the West End. The houses may not be finer than they had expected; but it is the cumulative effect of street on street and square on square of large and wealthy houses, stretching out for miles in all directions. A country cousin coming up to stay with me in London, I made out a list of sights that should be seen. Besides these sights, she saw a fire at a house close by. There were lots of engines and escapes, and I felt rather grateful to Providence for making this addition to my list; but I felt less grateful three nights afterwards, when Providence added a burglary, not at a neighbour’s house, but at my own. In chatting with a small boy who was staying here, I was telling him about the fig tree, and showing him that on the outer parts the leaves had five lobes each, but further in (where they received less light) the leaves had only three lobes, and in the densest part they had only one. He listened very attentively, and then he went indoors, and said to everyone he met, “I know all about fig-leaves.” [Illustration: THE PICTURES WITH THE DOG (_p. 36_), IN THE LOWER PARLOUR (_p. 50_)]