The Mostly Wasted Life and Ignoble Death of Alexander Groats, Part Two

It is not true that, as has been claimed previously on these pages (or rather, on other pages bearing the same name; for has not the philosopher said that it is impossible to immerse yourself twice in the same newspaper?), that it was young Groats who solved the fundamental problem of the self-propelled automaton – that is, the weight of the fuel burdening the machine so that more fuel is required, et cetera.

How could it be? Have we not ample evidence from sources which must in this very case be considered reliable even though they are no doubt under most other circumstances lying and scheming bastards just like Groats himself – that is, his relatives, who, one would assume, would take every opportunity to glorify (one would say, vain-glorify, if there was such a word) the achievments of said Groats. But instead they claim that after a scant few years of primary education – surely another piece of evidence, if one was needed, against the ridiculous claims with which the reader is no doubt already aquainted but which will nevertheless shortly be related – he spent the rest of his dull and uneventful life within the walls of the family home (surely a rapidly disitegrating hovel!) and came nowhere near (because of the great distance merciful Geography put between that place and the one not yet named but, by the generously provided context, easily recognizable) the Institute.

It is certaily not true that Groats, or somebody claiming to be him, walked into the Institute with a slight limp, dressed in a great dark cloak and with a hat at all times covering his head and obscuring the features of his face and, in a voice somewhat lacking in vocal range and intonation but nevertheless clearly audible, dictated the solution to an astonished Third Secretary who was, by chance, having his meager breakfast on the steps to the First Floor. On my honour as a scientist, it never happened!

Professor E. C. Frankenhofer (retired)