"The obvious one that the creature exists. That is actually
sketched from the life."

I should have laughed only that I had a vision of our doing
another Catharine-wheel down the passage.

"No doubt," said I, "no doubt," as one humors an imbecile.
"I confess, however," I added, "that this tiny human figure
puzzles me. If it were an Indian we could set it down as
evidence of some pigmy race in America, but it appears to be
a European in a sun-hat."

The Professor snorted like an angry buffalo. "You really touch
the limit," said he. "You enlarge my view of the possible.
Cerebral paresis! Mental inertia! Wonderful!"

He was too absurd to make me angry. Indeed, it was a waste of
energy, for if you were going to be angry with this man you would
be angry all the time. I contented myself with smiling wearily.
"It struck me that the man was small," said I.

"Look here!" he cried, leaning forward and dabbing a great hairy
sausage of a finger on to the picture. "You see that plant
behind the animal; I suppose you thought it was a dandelion or a
Brussels sprout--what? Well, it is a vegetable ivory palm, and
they run to about fifty or sixty feet. Don't you see that the man
is put in for a purpose? He couldn't really have stood in front of
that brute and lived to draw it. He sketched himself in to give a
scale of heights. He was, we will say, over five feet high.