"That is very simply answered," said the elder man; "you get to it by
walking straight in front of you."

"Anyone could do that," said the other.

"Anyone could," said the elder man, "but nobody does. I did.... When I
was quite a boy in my father's parsonage (for my father was a parson),
having heard so much about the End of the World and seeing that people's
descriptions of it differed so much and that everybody was quite sure of
his own, I used to take my father's friends and guests aside privately,
for I was afraid to take my father himself, and I used to ask them how
they knew what the End of the World was really like, and whether they
had seen it. Some laughed, others were silent, and others were angry;
but no one gave me any information. At last I decided (and it was very
wise of me) that the only way to find out a thing of that sort was to
find it out for one's self, and not to go by hearsay, so I determined to
go straight on without stopping until I got to the End of the World."

"Which way did you walk?" said yet another of my companions.

"Young man," said the stranger, with solemnity, "I walked westward
toward the setting sun ... I walked and I walked and I walked, day after
day and year after year. Whenever I came to the seacoast I would take
work on board a ship--and remember it is always easy to get work if you
will take the wages that are offered, and always difficult to get it if
you will not. Well, then, I went in this way through all known lands and
over all known seas, until at last I came to the shore of a sea beyond
which (so the people told me who lived there) there was no further
shore. 'I cannot help that,' said I; 'I have not yet come to the End of
the World, and it is common sense that such a lot of water must have