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64 Tom Sawyer Abroad
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 Eye-talian r -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."
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 Tern?"
" 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 |
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