"No, it would _not_ be funny. Do you think it would be funny to dig
ditches all your life and drive oxen like old Sim Barker?"
"But what makes him so bad is because he's foolish and dirty and has
tobacco juice in the corners of his mouth. Geography wouldn't help
_him_--nor anybody else. Geography!" And Cyrus uttered the word with
a fathomless contempt. "That geography just makes me sick--just sick,
sick, sick--and mad! What stuff it tells you! Which is the largest
African Lake? Where are the Barbary States? What about the surface
of Abyssinia? What are the products of the Cape of Good Hope? Who in
thunder cares for the climate of Uruguay or the exports of Ecuador?
Who'd ever be such a fool as to want to remember the population of
Thibet? And who cares anyway? Any jackass can know those things
whenever he wants to by looking at a map or that fool geography."
"Oh, Cyrus, you mustn't talk like that!"
But the revolutionist went on. "Why don't they tell us things worth
remembering? Look at my lesson to-day! The Island of Madagascar! Who in
thunder wants to know about the products of Madagascar? Hoh! It makes
me sick!"
"But, Drowsy, Madagascar is an important island and----"
"Important grandmother! Any fool can read about it. Why don't they tell
me things I want to know?"
"What thing _do_ you want to know?"
"I want to know things that other people don't know. I want to know
how the earth looks when you are standing on the moon. I want to know
what's lying in the mud at the bottom of the Tiber--all the bronze
and gold and marble things; and what sort of people live on the other
planets, and why cats and dogs can see in the dark. And if God is good
and not mean--why did he make Bobby Carter a hunchback?"
"Oh, Cyrus! It's wicked to talk like that!"
"No, it isn't. I'm only asking about it. I'm only asking why teacher
doesn't tell us things worth knowing. I want to know what would happen
if you dug a well through the center of the earth. Would a stone keep
on dropping till it came out the other side?"
"That is gravity," said Ruth in her wisest manner, glad of a chance to
hold her position as mentor.
"Yes, but the name doesn't help any. If I got into a big cannon ball
and was shot up into the air how many hundreds of miles would I go
before I would fall back? And if you should go up in a balloon a mile
high I want to know if you would stay still and see the earth going
round and round beneath you or would you have to go with it--and
Massachusetts always just underneath."
"There's no use in knowing that."
"Yes, there is. When I'm grown up I may do something like it."