It renders
a case unsubstantial to introduce these flimsy spirits. Fourthly, the map
is lost, and it might be asked was there ever such a map? Fifthly, the
people are all gone. Sixthly, no one ever saw any particular sparkle on
the brook there, and the clouds appear to be of the same commonplace
order that go about everywhere. Seventhly, no one can find these
footpaths, which probably led nowhere; and as for the little old man with
silver buckles on his shoes, it is a story only fit for some one in his
dotage. You can't expect grave and considerate men to take your story as
it stands; they must consult the Ordnance Survey and Domesday Book; and
the fact is, you have not got the shadow of a foundation on which to
carry your case into court. I may resent this, but I cannot deny that the
argument is very black against me, and I begin to think that my senses
have deceived me. It is as they say. No one else seems to have seen the
sparkle on the brook, or heard the music at the hatch, or to have felt
back through the centuries; and when I try to describe these things to
them they look at me with stolid incredulity. No one seems to understand
how I got food from the clouds, nor what there was in the night, nor why
it is not so good to look at it out of window. They turn their faces away
from me, so that perhaps after all I was mistaken, and there never was
any such place or any such meadows, and I was never there. And perhaps in
course of time I shall find out also, when I pass away physically, that
as a matter of fact there never was any earth.
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