I winked at Kewpie and said:You might as well know, I wont work unless I’ve got women around me. I’m the type that has to have women around. Can you get ’em for me? Such, for instance, was one of the mistakes committed in the celebrated phlogistic theory; a doctrine which accounted for combustion by the extrication of a substance called phlogiston, supposed to be contained in all combustible matter. The hypothesis accorded tolerably well with superficial appearances; the ascent of flame naturally suggests the escape of a substance; and the visible residuum of ashes, in bulk and weight, generally falls extremely short of the combustible material. The error was, non-observation of an important portion of the actual residue, namely, the gaseous products of combustion. When these were at last noticed and brought into account, it appeared to be a universal law, that all substances gain instead of losing weight by undergoing combustion; and after the usual attempt to accommodate the old theory to the new fact by means of an arbitrary hypothesis (that phlogiston had the quality of positive levity instead of gravity), chemists were conducted to the true explanation, namely, that instead of a substance separated, there was, on the contrary, a substance absorbed. Crandall was nice... too nice. Mrs. Wendel acted as though I wasnt on earth, beyond saying: Hello! when I first went over. It wasn’t that she high-hatted me; she just ignored me. I was as the dirt under her feet, if actions meant a thing. The two guards were very guarded, saying not a hell of a lot more than she did. The two chippies were swarming over me like bees... and I’d just as soon have had the bees. Some persons find themselves prevented from believing that the axiom, Two straight lines can not inclose a space, could ever become known to us through experience, by a difficulty which may be stated as follows: If the straight lines spoken of are those contemplated in the definition—lines absolutely without breadth and absolutely straight—that such are incapable of inclosing a space is not proved by experience, for lines such as these do not present themselves in our experience. If, on the other hand, the lines meant are such straight lines as we do meet with in experience, lines straight enough for practical purposes, but in reality slightly zigzag, and with some, however trifling, breadth; as applied to these lines the axiom is not true, for two of them may, and sometimes do, inclose a small portion of space. In neither case, therefore, does experience prove the axiom. Something large. Just what do you want to know? I dont know yet. I don’t think I’ll have to prove it. Well, you cant help it now. This kind of elimination, in which we do not eliminate any one assignable cause, but the multitude of floating unassignable ones, may be termed the Elimination of Chance. We afford an example of it when we repeat an experiment, in order, by taking the mean of different results, to get rid of the effects of the unavoidable errors of each individual experiment. When there is no permanent cause, such as would produce a tendency to error peculiarly in one direction, we are warranted by experience in assuming that the errors on one side will, in a certain number of experiments, about balance the errors on the contrary side. We therefore repeat the experiment, until any change which is produced in the average of the whole by further repetition, falls within limits of error consistent with the degree of accuracy required by the purpose we have in view.[175] What kind of trouble? I crouched down, turned around and waited. 51 Oh, no, one of the men said sarcastically. That State Police justhappened to be waiting there. They justhappened to grab my buddy! Well, youve taken the first trick. Let’s see how you do on the rest of the tricks. 9 Biographia Literaria, i., 214. Her vast collection of jewelry? Any pieces by the talented young Annie Gulliver? I said:Sure, if you hit the kitty. And dont put in two bits. Go first class with a buck. I had four numbers and began to believe I was going to draw a blank. The first two girls I called were busy that night. But the third said shed just love to go out and so on and I said I’d call for her at eight. I’d taken the numbers more from habit than anything else and couldn’t remember just which one of the many Rucci had introduced me to she was, but I figured I’d know her when I met her. I got the house doctor up and hada bit neater job done on my sore ear, and he was just leaving when Kewpie came in..