"
"Very well, then; had you felt the weight of the air at any given
moment, it must have produced an impression you never felt before, but
you have not, because circumstances have never varied. A sensation
supposes a contrast, whilst, ever since you existed, you have always
been subject to atmospheric pressure."
"Ah, now I begin to get at the gist of your argument. You mean, for
example, that I would never have appreciated the delicate flavor of
Maryland or Havanna, had I not been accustomed to smoke the
cabbage-leaf manufactured in Whitechapel."
"Precisely so; and take for another example the farm of Antisana,
which is situated about midway up the Cordilleras, mountains of South
America. When travellers, arriving there from the summits which are
covered with perpetual snow, meet others arriving from the plain where
the heat is intense, those that descend are invariably bathed in
perspiration, whilst those that have come up are shivering with cold
and covered with furs. The reason of this is, that we cannot feel warm
till we have been cold, and _vice versa_."
"Our bodies," resumed Fritz, "however much the thermometer descends,
never mark less than thirty-five degrees above zero. In winter the
skin shrinks, and becomes a bad conductor of heat from without; but,
at the same time, does not allow so much gas and vapor to escape from
within.
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