Yet in our more temperate regions, in which the southward attraction
is hardly felt, walking sometimes in a perfectly desolate plain
where there have been no houses nor trees to guide me, I have been
occasionally compelled to remain stationary for hours together,
waiting till the rain came before continuing my journey. On the weak
and aged, and especially on delicate Females, the force of attraction
tells much more heavily than on the robust of the Male Sex,
so that it is a point of breeding, if you meet a Lady in the street,
always to give her the North side of the way -- by no means
an easy thing to do always at short notice when you are in rude health
and in a climate where it is difficult to tell your North
from your South.
Windows there are none in our houses: for the light comes to us alike
in our homes and out of them, by day and by night, equally at
all times and in all places, whence we know not. It was in old days,
with our learned men, an interesting and oft-investigated question,
"What is the origin of light?" and the solution of it
has been repeatedly attempted, with no other result than to crowd
our lunatic asylums with the would-be solvers.
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