ch 30 M&D

[Joseph Tracy]

CH 30  ( mostly summary)
M&D to south Philadelphia to observatory being built for them, and point of departure for westward line. Question arises. Will telescope fit through door? Carpenters will make door to get it in and out.

"Dixon looks for others interested in the magnetic at a coffee bar, the Flower de Luce.  
“Half and Half please, Mount Kenya Double-A, with Java Highland,— perhaps a slug o’ boil’d Milk as well . . . ?” 
“Planning on some elevated Discourse tonight?” jests the Coffee-Draper, swiftly and with little misdirection assembling Dixon’s order. His Wig shines with a Nimbus in the strange secondary light from the Mirror behind him.” p 298    

Dixon finds Dolly, former associte of Molly and Franklin and fellow compass enthusiast., who has new “data” about a change in rise and fall of land. Asks D what it could mean and Dixon casually suggests something moving westward underground. She hushes him about topic. 
“Hush.” Her Eyes rapidly sweep the Vicinity. “No one ever speaks of that aloud here,— what  sort of incautious Lad are you, exactly?”
 “Why, the usual sort, I guess.”(p. 299).


We find out Dixon has a remarkabe sensitivity to the compass and its messages. This seems a set-up to tell us to take note of underground doings, and the magnetic landscape. Why?  One thought is that the colonists are becoming colonizers as they move west. The movement perhaps as much a part of collective unconscious as political arrangement. But there is doubtless more here.

  
She calls Calvert and friends gooses, slang for same sex orientation, and notes these upper crustys hope Dixon’s work will make them nabobs. She thinks M&D might be gay, Dixon says not. She warns him to beware in his findings.