suggested.

"Yes; but how hard it is to realise that we are on the earth now.
Sometimes I have a sense of it, though, when the moon breaks from
one flying cloud to another. Then it seems as if I were a passenger
on some vast, shapeless ship sailing through the air. What," he
asked, with no relevancy that I could perceive, "was the strangest
feeling YOU ever had?" I remembered asking girls such questions
when I was young, and their not apparently thinking it at all odd.

"I don't know," she returned thoughtfully. "There was one time when
I was little, and it had sleeted, and the sun came out just before
it set, and seemed to set all the woods on fire. I thought the
world was burning up."

"It must have been very weird," said Kendricks; and I thought, "Oh,
good heavens! Has he got to talking of weird things?"

"It's strange," he added, "how we all have that belief when we are
children that the world is going to burn up! I don't suppose any
child escapes it. Do you remember that poem of Thompson's--the City
of Dreadful Night man--where he describes the end of the world?"

"No, I never read it."

"Well, merely, he says when the conflagration began the little
flames looked like crocuses breaking through the sod. If it ever
happened I fancy it would be quite as simple as that. But perhaps
you don't like gloomy poetry?"