They would die sooner.

When pressed for a scientific reply to a scientific argument, they denied that there was any argument to reply to.

What! Had not Belfast seen the Projectile?
No! Was not the Great Telescope then good for anything?
Yes, but not for everything! Did not Belfast know his business?
No! Did they mean to say that he had seen nothing at all?
Well, not exactly that, but those scientific gentlemen can seldom be trusted; in their rage for discovery, they make a mountain out of a molehill, or, what is worse, they start a theory and then distort facts to support it.

Answers of this kind either led directly to a fight, or the _Belfasters_ moved away thoroughly disgusted with the ignorance of their opponents, who could not see a chain of reasoning as bright as the noonday sun.
Things were in this feverish state on the evening of the 14th, when, all at once, Bloomsbury's dispatch arrived in Baltimore.

I need not say that it dropped like a spark in a keg of gun powder.