The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "It cannot be!" he cried after a moment. "It cannot be!
Tell me that you are mistaken, or that you are but joking."
"I am telling you the truth, my friend," I replied.
"Why should I deceive a stranger, or attempt to, in so
simple a matter as the date?"
For some time he stood in silence, with bowed head.
"Ten years!" he murmured, at last. "Ten years, and I
thought that at the most it could be scarce more than one!"
That night he told me his story--the story that I give you
here as nearly in his own words as I can recall them.
I
 At the Earth's Core |