“Noon!” says Tom, and so it was.
His shadder was just a blot around his feet.
We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve
the difference didn’t amount to nothing.
So Tom said London was right north of us or right
south of us, one or t’other, and he reckoned
by the weather and the sand and the camels it was
north; and a good many miles north, too; as many as
from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.
Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the
fastest thing in the world, unless it might be some
kinds of birds—a wild pigeon, maybe, or
a railroad.
But Tom said he had read about railroads in England
going nearly a hundred miles an hour for a little
ways, and there never was a bird in the world that
could do that—except one, and that was a
flea.
“A flea? Why, Mars Tom, in de fust place
he ain’t a bird, strickly speakin’—”
“He ain’t a bird, eh? Well, then,
what is he?”
“I don’t rightly know, Mars Tom, but I
speck he’s only jist a’ animal. No,
I reckon dat won’t do, nuther, he ain’t
big enough for a’ animal. He mus’
be a bug. Yassir, dat’s what he is, he’s
a bug.”
“I bet he ain’t, but let it go. What’s
your second place?”
“Well, in de second place, birds is creturs
dat goes a long ways, but a flea don’t.”
“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.”
“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,
