"
I replied that I could adapt the size of my proposed study to fit the
table, and he said:
"Now that will be very good. Then when I want exercise I can walk down
and play billiards with you, and when you want exercise you can walk up
and play billiards with me. You must build that study."
So it was planned, and the work was presently under way.
How many things we talked of! Life, death, the future--all the things of
which we know so little and love so much to talk about. Astronomy, as I
have said, was one of his favorite subjects. Neither of us had any real
knowledge of the matter, which made its great facts all the more awesome.
The thought that the nearest fixed star was twenty-five trillions of
miles away--two hundred and fifty thousand times the distance to our own
remote sun--gave him a sort of splendid thrill. He would figure out
those appalling measurements of space, covering sheets of paper with his
sums, but he was not a good mathematician, and the answers were generally
wrong. Comets in particular interested him, and one day he said:
"I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It is coming again next
year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest
disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's comet.
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