Well, suppose a man could go
fifteen hundred times his own length in a second--say, a mile and a half.
It's ninety miles a minute; it's considerable more than five thousand
miles an hour. Where's your man NOW?--yes, and your bird, and your
railroad, and your balloon? Laws, they don't amount to shucks 'longside
of a flea. A flea is just a comet b'iled down small."
Jim was a good deal astonished, and so was I. Jim said:
"Is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin' en no lies, Mars Tom?"
"Yes, they are; they're perfectly true."
"Well, den, honey, a body's got to respec' a flea. I ain't had no respec'
for um befo', sca'sely, but dey ain't no gittin' roun' it, dey do deserve
it, dat's certain."
"Well, I bet they do. They've got ever so much more sense, and brains,
and brightness, in proportion to their size, than any other cretur in the
world. A person can learn them 'most anything; and they learn it quicker
than any other cretur, too. They've been learnt to haul little carriages
in harness, and go this way and that way and t'other way according to
their orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers, doing it as
exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. They've been learnt to
do all sorts of hard and troublesome things. S'pose you could cultivate a
flea up to the size of a man, and keep his natural smartness a-growing
and a-growing right along up, bigger and bigger, and keener and keener,
in the same proportion--where'd the human race be, do you reckon? That
flea would be President of the United States, and you couldn't any more
prevent it than you can prevent lightning.
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