n 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."

"My lan', Mars Tom, I never knowed dey was so much TO de beas'. No, sir,
I never had no idea of it, and dat's de fac'."

"There's more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any other
cretur, man or beast, in proportion to size. He's the interestingest
of them all. People have so much to say about an ant's strength, and an
elephant's, and a locomotive's. Shucks, they don't begin with a flea. He
can lift two or three hundred times his own weight. And none of them can
come anywhere near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his own,
and is very particular, and you can't fool him; his instinct, or his
judgment, or whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and don't
ever make a mistake. People think all humans are alike to a flea. It
ain't so. There's folks that he won't go near, hungry or not hungry, and
I'm one of them. I've never had one of them on me in my life."

"Mars Tom!"

"It's so; I ain't joking."

"Well, sah, I hain't ever heard de likes o' dat befo'." Jim couldn