The Flying-Machine
AN Ingenious Man who had built a flying-machine invited a great
concourse of people to see it go up. At the appointed moment,
everything being ready, he boarded the car and turned on the power.
The machine immediately broke through the massive substructure upon
which it was builded, and sank out of sight into the earth, the
aeronaut springing out barely in time to save himself.
"Well," said he, "I have done enough to demonstrate the correctness
of my details. The defects," he added, with a look at the ruined
brick-work, "are merely basic and fundamental."
Upon this assurance the people came forward with subscriptions to
build a second machine.
Of course one piece by Bierce is never enough ... (I had a serious Ambrose Bierce addiction in high school) ... one of my favorites..
The Opossum of the Future
ONE day an Opossum who had gone to sleep hanging from the highest
branch of a tree by the tail, awoke and saw a large Snake wound
about the limb, between him and the trunk of the tree.
"If I hold on," he said to himself, "I shall be swallowed; if I let
go I shall break my neck."
But suddenly he bethought himself to dissemble.
"My perfected friend," he said, "my parental instinct recognises in
you a noble evidence and illustration of the theory of development.
You are the Opossum of the Future, the ultimate Fittest Survivor of
our species, the ripe result of progressive prehensility - all
tail!"
But the Snake, proud of his ancient eminence in Scriptural history,
was strictly orthodox, and did not accept the scientific view.
