3, Republican-street; as it was important that the stomach should not trouble so important a debate, the four members of the Gun Club took their seats at a table covered with sandwiches and teapots.

J.T.

Maston immediately screwed his pen on to his steel hook and the business began.
Barbicane opened the meeting as follows:-- "Dear colleagues," said he, "we have to solve one of the more important problems in ballistics--that greatest of sciences which treats of the movement of projectiles--that is to say, of bodies hurled into space by some power of impulsion and then left to themselves." "Oh, ballistics, ballistics!" cried J.T.Maston in a voice of emotion.
"Perhaps," continued Barbicane, "the most logical thing would be to consecrate this first meeting to discussing the engine." "Certainly," answered General Morgan.
"Nevertheless," continued Barbicane, "after mature deliberation, it seems to me that the question of the projectile ought to precede that of the cannon, and that the dimensions of the latter ought to depend upon the dimensions of the former." J.T.Maston here interrupted the president, and was heard with the attention which his magnificent past career deserved.
"My dear friends," said he in an inspired tone, "our president is right to give the question of the projectile the precedence of every other; the cannon-ball we mean to hurl at the moon will be our messenger, our ambassador, and I ask your permission to regard it from an entirely moral point of view." This new way of looking at a projectile excited the curiosity of the members of the committee; they therefore listened attentively to the words of J.T.

Maston.
"My dear colleagues," he continued, "I will be brief.

I will lay aside the material projectile--the projectile that kills--in order to take up the mathematical projectile--the moral projectile.