But the powers that set me the task
provided a fitter back than mine for that burden. As I explained
years ago in the preface to "How the Other Half Lives," the patient
friendship of Dr. Roger S. Tracy, the learned statistician of
the Health Department, has smoothed the rebellious kinks out of
death-rates and population statistics, as of so many other knotty
problems which we have worked out together.
But I am getting out of my longitude, as I did then. When I had
groped about long enough trying to make my audience understand
what I only half understood myself, an old sea-captain arose in
his place and said that any man who would make a mess of so simple
a thing as latitude and longitude evidently knew nothing at all.
It happened to be the one thing he knew about. Popular favor is
a fickle thing. The audience that had but now been applauding my
efforts to organize the earth took his word for it without waiting
for an explanation and went out in a body, scouting even the
ichthyosaurus as a prehistoric fake.
I made a valiant effort to stem the tide, but came to worse grief
than before.
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