his behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted
was "significant" facts, and that he was not accustomed to examine the
source whence they proceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of
conspiracy against him almost from the start--a conspiracy to freight him
up with all the strange extravagances those people's decayed brains could
invent.

The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him
things which surely would have excited any one else's suspicion, but they
did not excite his. Consider this:

"There is not in all the United States an entirely nude
statue."

If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a
reasonably cautious observer would take that angel's number and inquire a
little further before he added it to his catch. What does the present
observer do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with
this innocent comment:

"This small fact is strangely significant."

It does seem to me that this kind of observing is defective.

Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present
of. I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber of his
suspicion a little, but it didn't. It was a note from a fog-horn for
strenuousness, it seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not catch it.
If he had but caught it, it would have saved him from several disasters: