One night as I was waiting, watch in hand, for an occultation, and striving hard to keep awake, for it had been a hot and exhausting summer's day, while my wife--we were then in our honeymoon--sat sympathetically by my side, I suddenly found myself withdrawn from the telescope, and standing in a place that appeared entirely strange. It was a very smooth bit of ground, and, to my surprise, there was no horizon in sight; that is to say, the surface of the ground disappeared on all sides at a short distance off, and beyond nothing but sky was visible. I thought I must be on the top of a stupendous mountain, and yet I was puzzled to understand how the face of the earth could be so far withdrawn. Presently I became aware that there was some one by me whom I could not see.
"You are not on a mountain," my companion said, and as he spoke a cold shiver ran along my back-bone; "you are on an asteroid, one of those miniature planets, as you astronomers call them, and of which you have discovered several hundred revolving between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This is the little globe that you have glimpsed occasionally with your telescope, and that you, or some of your fellows, have been kind enough to name Menippe."
Then I perceived that my companion, whose address had hardly been reassuring, was a gigantic inhabitant of the little planet, towering up to a height of three quarters of a mile. For a moment I was highly amused, standing by his foot, which swelled up like a hill, and straining my neck backward to get a look up along the precipice of his leg, which, curiously enough, I observed was clothed in rough homespun, the woolly knots of the cloth appearing of tremendous size, while it bagged at the knee like any terrestrial trousers' leg. His great head and face I could see far above me, as it were, in the clouds. Yet I was not at all astonished.
"This is all right," I said to myself. "Of course on Menippe the people must be as large as this, for the little planet is only a dozen miles in diameter, and the force of gravity is consequently so small that a man without loss of activity, or inconvenience, can grow three quarters of a mile tall."
Suddenly an idea occurred to me. "Just to think what a jump I can make! Why, only the other day I was figuring it out that a man could easily jump a thousand feet high from the surface of Menippe, and now here I actually am on Menippe. I'll jump."