“He don’t, don’t he? Come, now, what _is_ a long distance, if you know?” “Why, it’s miles, and lots of ’em—anybody knows dat.” “Can’t a man walk miles?” “Yassir, he kin.” “As many as a railroad?” “Yassir, if you give him time.” “Can’t a flea?” “Well—I s’pose so—ef you gives him heaps of time.” “Now you begin to see, don’t you, that _distance_ ain’t the thing to judge by, at all; it’s the time it takes to go the distance _in_ that _counts_, ain’t it?” “Well, hit do look sorter so, but I wouldn’t ’a’ b’lieved it, Mars Tom.” [Illustration: “And where’s your railroad, alongside of a flea?”] “It’s a matter of _proportion_, that’s what it is; and when you come to gauge a thing’s speed by its size, where’s your bird and your man and your railroad, alongside of a flea? The fastest man can’t run more than about ten miles in an hour—not much over ten thousand times his own length. But all the books says any common ordinary third-class flea can jump a hundred and fifty times his own length; yes, and he can make five jumps a second too—seven hundred and fifty times his own length, in one little second—for he don’t fool away any time stopping and starting—he does them both at the same time; you’ll see, if you try to put your finger on him. Now that’s a common, ordinary, third-class flea’s gait; but you take an Eyetalian _first_-class, that’s been the pet of the nobility all his life, and hasn’t ever knowed what want or sickness or exposure was, and he can jump more than three hundred times his own length, and keep it up all day, five such jumps every second, which is fifteen hundred times his own length. 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.” [Illustration: “Where’s your man now?”] 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.”