At the Earth's Core
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
PROLOGUE
In the first place please bear in mind that I do not
expect you to believe this story. Nor could you wonder
had you witnessed a recent experience of mine when,
in the armor of blissful and stupendous ignorance,
I gaily narrated the gist of it to a Fellow of the Royal
Geological Society on the occasion of my last trip to London.
You would surely have thought that I had been detected
in no less a heinous crime than the purloining of the Crown
Jewels from the Tower, or putting poison in the coffee
of His Majesty the King.
The erudite gentleman in whom I confided congealed
before I was half through!--it is all that saved him
from exploding--and my dreams of an Honorary Fellowship,
gold medals, and a niche in the Hall of Fame faded into
the thin, cold air of his arctic atmosphere.
But I believe the story, and so would you, and so would
the learned Fellow of the Royal Geological Society, had you
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