The President indulged the evident curiosity of his popular audience in a scientific discourse. His own interest was evident. He discussed earthquakes; he plunged into an essay on volcanoes; he spread luminously before the people the theories of the pear-shaped earth, the slipping of faults, the loading of the earth’s crust, the original formation of the deep creases in the earth’s surface, which now held its gathered waters. The President made a model expositor. He was clear and interesting. His style, his illustrative similes were attractive and deliberately helpful. It was almost amusing to note the contrasted effect of this improvised academic demonstration upon the people and upon the political sages of the platform. The former were attentive and absorbed. Their faces lit up with the quiet pleasure of intelligent appreciation, frequently at some pungent expression that pictured to them in stirring forcible photographic phrase the stifling struggle of land and water, the fierce unrest far down there in the tropics, which was unsettling the foundations of the earth, and slowly establishing a new order of things, pregnant with revolution in the day and fate of nations, carrying in its geological material insensate womb of meaning the dissolution of states, the upset and consternation of rulers, a menace to civilization, the ruthless unwavering threat to human accidents and institutions. To all this the political magnates listened with bored indifference. They expected a party appeal, some appetizing bid for popular suffrage, a shot at the South, a resounding puff for the Republican candidates, a public acknowledgement of their personal industry in securing the re-election of himself, new projects of expenditure, and a programme of national expansion. They turned and twisted, and some deliberately slept or engaged in low conversations with an expressive irony of shrugs and smiles.