“This conclusion is unwelcome; it may seem destructive to those natural hopes which the approaching completion of this wonderful enterprise--the Panama Canal--have so freely and inevitably fostered. Science in the last resource to her councils must be austerely judicial. She cannot take cognizance of man’s projects or respect his hopes. The Panama Canal as part of the Isthmus of Panama participates in all the vicissitudes of the latter, and we know that those vicissitudes mean dislocation and subsidence. When such frightful results will happen, _it is impossible to say_; that they must happen, _we can positively assert_.” The lecture was over. The lecturer retreated, and again repeated his deferential nod to the chairman, Dr. Smith, as if importuning his assistance in corroboration of his mournful vaticination. The audience still remained immobile, coagulated into a sort of mental prostration by this dismal prophecy, and yet again as if contemplating, like a cat’s stagnation, preparatory to its murderous spring, some outward and physical resentment. And the spring came. In the middle of the hall arose a tall and alert figure, perhaps noticeably bent, as if from the effort of attention, or perchance from forensic habits; for the man, as Dr. M-- quickly informed Leacraft, was Senator Tillman, of South Carolina. The face of this sudden expostulant was handsome in the extreme, and the features, strongly marked, were blended together in an expression of youthfulness that seemed to win a strange charm from their association with the white hair, and the just beginning wrinkles of advancing years. Senator Tillman lost no time. His interruption was decisively intentional. It was part of an impulsive impassioned nature. Shaking his index finger, which, from long practice, pointed undeviatingly at the object of his remarks, the Senator, in a voice harsh and penetrating, began: “My dear sir, we are indebted to you for information. But we stop there. We are not required to credit you with prediction. This scientific discussion will not alter our confidence nor stop the work on the Canal. It can’t. I’m not inclined to think that this nation will be stultified by the oracles of geology; it is a matter of simple determination that science makes mistakes--and I would advise no one in this room within the hearing of your voice, and no one outside of it, to whose eyes your reported views will appear, to allow them a scintilla of serious import.