My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

;MONEY MATTERS 367moreover, proved that the curvature was very nearlyof the amount calculated from the known dimensionsof the earth. Mr. Hampden declined to look througheither telescope, saying he trusted to Mr. Carpenterwhile the latter declared positively that they had won,and that we knew it ; that the fact that the distantsignal appeared below the middle one as far as themiddle one did below the cross-hair, proved that thethree were in a straight line, and that the earth wasflat, and he rejected the view in the large telescopeas proving nothing for the reasons already stated.At first Mr. Hampden refused to appoint anumpire, because my referee, Mr. Coulcher, refused todiscuss the question with Mr. Carpenter ; but after afew days he agreed that Mr. Walsh should be theumpire, after receiving the reports of the two referees.He had, in fact, unbounded confidence in what Mr.Carpenter told him, and firmly believed that theexperiments had demonstrated the flat earth, andthat no honest man could think otherwise.But Mr, Walsh decided without any hesitationthat I had proved what I undertook to prove. Hepublished the whole of the particulars with the reportsof the referees and their sketches in the Field ofMarch 18 and 26, while a considerable correspondenceand discussion went on for some weeks later. AtMr. Hampden's request he allowed Mr. Carpenterto send in a long argument to show that the experimentswere all in Mr. Hampden's favour, and havingconsidered them, he wrote to Mr. Hampden that heshould hand me the stakes on a certain day if he hadno other reason to adduce why he should not do so.Thereupon Mr. Hampden wrote to him demandinghis money hack on the ground that the decision wasunjust, and ought to have been given in his favour.