I was just questioning the reality of matter and the existence of the universe as you spoke; but it's not important." The general shivered, and turned his kind blue eyes on his friend in a smile, and then bethought him to put the wood in the stove.
While he was jamming in a final stick, Colonel Culpepper inquired, "Well, am I an appearance or an entity ?" The general put the smoking poker on the floor, and turned the damper in the pipe as he answered: "That's what I can't seem to make out.

You know old Emerson says a man doesn't amount to much as a thinker until he has doubted the existence of matter.

And I just got to thinking about it, and wondering if this was a real world after all--or just my idea of one." The two men smiled at the notion, and Ward went on: "All right, laugh if you want to, but if this is a real world, whose world is it, your world or my world?
Here is John Barclay, for instance.

Sometimes I get a peek at his world." Ward picked up the poker and sat down and hammered the toe of a boot with it as he went on: "John's world is the Golden Belt Wheat Company, wheat pouring a steady stream into boundless bins, and money flowing in golden ripples over it all.

Sometimes Bob Hendricks' head rises above the tide long enough to gasp or cry for help and beg to come home, but John's golden flood sweeps over him again, and he's gone.