I could see that I had nearly reached the limit with him, and that if I held him now it must be by driving the truth straight home.

So I stepped over toward him and said very earnestly: "My friend, don't think I am merely joking you.

I was never more in earnest in all my life.

When I told you I was a road-worker I meant it, but I had in mind the mending of other kinds of roads than this." I laid my hand on his arm, and explained to him as directly and simply as English words could do it, how, when he had spoken of oil for his roads, I thought of another sort of oil for another sort of roads, and when he spoke of curves in his roads I was thinking of curves in the roads I dealt with, and I explained to him what my roads were.

I have never seen a man more intensely interested: he neither moved nor took his eyes from my face.
"And when I spoke of selling you a pair of spectacles," said I, "it was only a way of telling you how much I wanted to make you see my kinds of roads as well as your own." I paused, wondering if, after all, he could be made to see.