Page:The water-babies.djvu/178

THE WATER BABIES but Bumpsterhausen's blue follicles, having, as usual, set the cart before the horse, and taken the effect for the cause.

So they were forced at last to let the poor professor ease his mind by writing a great book, exactly contrary to all his old opinions; in which he proved that the moon was made of green cheese, and that all the mites in it (which you may see sometimes quite plain through a telescope, if you will only keep the lens dirty enough, as Mr. Weekes kept his voltaic battery) are nothing in the world but little babies, who are hatching and swarming up there in millions, ready to come down into this world whenever children want a new little brother or sister.

Which must be a mistake, for this one reason: that, there being no atmosphere round the moon (though someone or other says there is, at least on the other side, and that he has been round at the back of it to see, and found that the moon was just the shape of a Bath bun, and so wet that the man in the moon went about on Midsummer day in Macintoshes and Cording's boots, spearing eels and sneezing); that, therefore, I say, there being no atmosphere, there can be no evaporation, and therefore the dew-point can never fall below 71·5° below zero of Fahrenheit: and, therefore, it cannot be cold enough there about four o'clock in the morning to condense the babies' mesenteric apophthegms into their left ventricles; and, therefore, they can never catch whooping-cough; and if they do not have whooping 158