Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month or so ago.

And he said to him: I have dreamed dreams, and there is no one that can expound them: Now I have heard that thou art very wise at interpreting them.

I awoke, and then fell asleep again, and dreamed a dream: Seven ears of corn grew up upon one stalk, full and very fair. Other seven also thin and blasted, sprung of the stalk: And they devoured the beauty of the former: I told this dream to the conjecturers, and there is no man that can expound it.

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.

Would you care to expound?

There, when at Cumae landing from the main, / Avernus' lakes and sounding woods ye gain, / thyself shalt see, within her rock-hewn shrine, / the frenzied prophetess, whose mystic strain / expounds the Fates, to leaves of trees consign / the notes and names that mark the oracles divine."