Now your substantial, sober, practical American will stand only
about so much verbal foolery; and there is nothing in the world
that makes him more uncomfortable--yes, downright mad!-- than to
feel that he is being played with. I could see that I had nearly
reached the limit with him, and that if I held him now it must be
by driving the truth straight home. So I stepped over toward him
and said very earnestly:
"My friend, don't think I am merely joking you. I was never more
in earnest in all my life. When I told you I was a road-worker I
meant it, but I had in mind the mending of other kinds of roads
than this."
I laid my hand on his arm, and explained to him as directly and
simply as English words could do it, how, when he had spoken of
oil for his roads, I thought of another sort of oil for another
sort of roads, and when he spoke of curves in his roads I was
thinking of curves in the roads I dealt with, and I explained to
him what my roads were. I have never seen a man more intensely
interested: he neither moved nor took his eyes from my face.
"And when I spoke of selling you a pair of spectacles," said I,
"it was only a way of telling you how much I wanted to make you
see my kinds of roads as well as your own."
I paused, wondering if, after all, he could be made to see.
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