THIS is quite a different sort of story. It is about a princess who disbelieved in arithmetic.

“Was she a French princess?” inquired the publisher.

“Certainly not,” said the author, “and I cannot think why you should suppose that she was. On the contrary, she lived in Hammersmith Broadway, and took the view that there was no reason why parallel lines should not meet. ‘Why,’ she would ask, ‘should they be snobs just because they happen to be parallel? Besides,’ she would add, ‘when I draw them they do meet.’”

“But,” said a celebrated professor from the London School of Economics who had been summoned by her anxious parents to cope with the situation, “those lines which you have drawn aren’t parallel.”

“Why?” inquired the princess.

“Why?” said the professor, “but it is obvious to anybody. Can’t you see that they meet?”“Yes,” said the princess, “I see that, but that is what I call being parallel.”

“But can’t you see that you are defying the axioms upon which all cognition is based. If parallel lines meet, then when I meet you you do not meet me.”

“I see no harm in that,” said the princess, who, to be perfectly honest, had formed a (quite unjustly) low opinion of the professor’s social gifts; “but speaking of axioms, would you agree that God is omnipotent?”

“Certainly,” said the professor, “but I do not see how——”

“Forgive me,” said the princess icily. “If God is omnipotent should he not be able to draw parallel lines that meet?”

“You will forgive my observing,” said the professor, “that if God interfered with mathematics he would cease to be God.”

“And if mathematics interfered with God?” inquired the princess.

“I cannot,” said the professor, slapping his tall hat on his head with a resounding bang, “waste my time in talking nonsense.”

“You could, however,” cried the princess after him, “give up teaching mathematics, could you not?”