It seemed the opportune moment. My pulse quickened and stopped as I leaned forward and said: “It’s to _find a new world_!” “At the South Pole?” “At the South Pole.” “What’s the matter with the North?” “The North Pole is a frozen sea—a desolation of ice. At the South Pole there is a continent—I believe a warm one.” “What warmed it?” “The oblation of the earth, which brings the surface there sufficiently near the great central heat to counteract the otherwise low temperature resulting from the oblique angle of the direct solar rays.” I had gone over this so often that in my eagerness I suppose I parroted it off like a phonograph. Gale was regarding me keenly—mystified but interested. “Look here,” he said. “I believe you’re in earnest. Just say that again, please; slow, and without any frills, this time.” I was ready enough to simplify. “Mr. Gale,” I began, “you are aware, perhaps, that when we dig down into the earth we find that it becomes rapidly warmer as we descend, so that a heat is presently reached at which life could not exist, and from this it has been argued that the inner earth is a mass of fire surrounded only by an outer crust of some fifty miles in thickness. We also know by observation and experiment that the diameter of the earth between the poles is some twenty-six miles less than it is at any point on the equator. This is known as the earth’s oblation, or, as the school-books have it, the flattening of the poles.” I paused and Gale nodded; apparently these things were not entirely unfamiliar to him. I proceeded with my discourse. “You will see, therefore, that at each polar axis the earth’s surface is some thirteen miles nearer to this great central heat than at the equator, and this I believe to be sufficient to produce a warmth which prevents the great ice-floes of the Arctic Sea from solidifying about the North Pole; while at the South, where there is a continent into which ice-floes cannot be forced, I am convinced that there will some day be found a warm habitable country about the earth’s axis. Whoever finds it will gain immortality, and perhaps wealth beyond his wildest dreams.” I had warmed to this explanation with something of the old-time enthusiasm, and I could see that Gale was listening closely. It may have appealed to his sense of humor, or perhaps the very wildness of the speculation attracted him. “Say,” he laughed, as I finished, “the world turning on its axle would help to keep it warm there, too, wouldn’t it?” I joined in his merriment. The humors of the enterprise were not the least of its attractions. “But that _would_ be a bully place for a real-estate man,” he reflected. “First on the ground could have it all his own way, couldn’t he? Build and own railroads and trolley lines, and lay out the whole country in additions. Sunnybank, Snowbank, Axis Hill—look here, why ain’t anybody ever been there before?”