"Did you ever study atomics when you were a lad?" asked the sergeant giving me a look of inquiry and surprise
"No" I answered
" That is a very serious defalcation" he said, "but all the same I will tell you the size of it. Everything is composed of small particles and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms....
"They are lively as twenty leprechauns doing a jig on top of a tombstone.....
"Atomics is a very intricate theorem and can be worked out with algebra but you would want to take it by degrees because you might spend the whole night proving a bit of it with rulers and cosines and similar other instruments and then at the wind-up not believe what you have proved at all ...
"Consecutively and consequentially you can safely infer that you are made of atoms yourself and so is your fob pocket and the tail of your shirt and the instrument you use for taking the leavings out of the crook of your hollow tooth. Do you know what takes place when you strike a bar of iron with a good coal hammer or with a blunt instrument...
" Ask a blacksmith fr the true answer and he will tell you that the bar will dissipate itself away by degrees if you persevere with the hard wallops. Some of the atoms of the bar will go into the hammer and the half into the table or the stone or the particular article that is underneath the bottom of the bar...
"The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...
Sergeant Pluck's Atomic Theory rates as one of my favourite literary creations. I thought it was high time I shared it with both of my readers in the hope of getting them on to buy the Third Policeman. They won't be sorry!
More to follow
"No" I answered
" That is a very serious defalcation" he said, "but all the same I will tell you the size of it. Everything is composed of small particles and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms....
"They are lively as twenty leprechauns doing a jig on top of a tombstone.....
"Atomics is a very intricate theorem and can be worked out with algebra but you would want to take it by degrees because you might spend the whole night proving a bit of it with rulers and cosines and similar other instruments and then at the wind-up not believe what you have proved at all ...
"Consecutively and consequentially you can safely infer that you are made of atoms yourself and so is your fob pocket and the tail of your shirt and the instrument you use for taking the leavings out of the crook of your hollow tooth. Do you know what takes place when you strike a bar of iron with a good coal hammer or with a blunt instrument...
" Ask a blacksmith fr the true answer and he will tell you that the bar will dissipate itself away by degrees if you persevere with the hard wallops. Some of the atoms of the bar will go into the hammer and the half into the table or the stone or the particular article that is underneath the bottom of the bar...
"The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...
Sergeant Pluck's Atomic Theory rates as one of my favourite literary creations. I thought it was high time I shared it with both of my readers in the hope of getting them on to buy the Third Policeman. They won't be sorry!
More to follow
