Mrs. Evangelina Scorbitt was deeply touched by this recognition of the celebrated mathematician, who had already entirely gained her heart. He contented himself with turning his head to the right and left, bowing and thanking his auditors. "Already, dear subscribers," said President Barbicane, "since the great meeting in honor of the arrival of the Frenchman, Michel Ardan, in America, some months before our departure for the moon" (and this confident Yankee spoke of the trip to the moon as quietly as if it were no more than a trip to New York), "J T. Maston had already said to himself: 'We must invent machines to move the North Pole. We must find a point for action and put the axis of the earth in the right direction from the object.' Well, any or all of you who listen to me find it if you can. I can only say the machines have been invented, the point of leverage has been found, and now let us pay our attention to the question of fixing, in the right way, for our end of the axis of the earth." Here he stopped speaking, and the astonishment which was expressed on the faces of his auditors it is impossible to describe. "What!" cried Major Donellan, "you then have the idea of putting the axis of the earth in another direction?" "Yes, sir," answered President Barbicane promptly. "We have the means of making a new one which will hereafter regulate the routine of day and night." "You want to modify the daily rotation of the earth?" repeated Col. Karkof, with fire in his eyes. "Absolutely, but without affecting its duration," answered President Barbicane. This operation will bring the pole at or about the sixty-seventh parallel of latitude, then the earth will be similar to the planet Jupiter, whose axis is nearly perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. Now this movement of 23 degrees 28 minutes will be sufficient to give at our North Pole such a degree of heat that it will melt in less than no time the icebergs and field which have been there for thousands of years." The audience was out of breath. Nobody thought of interrupting the orator, even to applaud him. All were taken in by this idea, so ingenious and simple, of modifying the axis on which this earthly spheroid is rotating. And as for the European delegates, well, they were simply stupefied, paralyzed, and crushed, they kept their mouths shut in the last stage of astonishment. But the hurrahs seemed to rend the hall asunder, when President Barbicane made the additional remark: "It is the sun which will take upon himself the melting of the icebergs and fields around the North Pole, and thus make access to the same very easy. So, as people cannot go to the pole, the pole will come to them."