"I asked if Barbican couldn't write. In that question I see
nothing whatever to laugh at. Can't a man write without being obliged to
send his letters?"
"This is all nonsense," said the Doctor. "What's the use of a man
writing to you if he can't send you what he writes?"
"What's the use of his sending it to you if he can have it read without
that trouble?" answered the little Midshipman in a confident tone. "Is
there not a telescope at Long's Peak? Doesn't it bring the Moon within a
few miles of the Rocky Mountains, and enable us to see on her surface,
objects as small as nine feet in diameter? Well! What's to prevent
Barbican and his friends from constructing a gigantic alphabet? If they
write words of even a few hundred yards and sentences a mile or two
long, what is to prevent us from reading them? Catch the idea now, eh?"
They did catch the idea, and heartily applauded the little Middy for his
smartness. Even the Doctor saw a certain kind of merit in it, and
Brownson acknowledged it to be quite feasible. In fact, expanding on it,
the Lieutenant assured his hearers that, by means of large parabolic
reflectors, luminous groups of rays could be dispatched from the Earth,
of sufficient brightness to establish direct communication even with
Venus or Mars, where these rays would be quite as visible as the planet
Neptune is from the Earth.
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