to me until
that day on the train that the groceryman does not put the big ones on
top and the little ones down underneath. He does not need to do it. It
does itself. It is the shaking of the barrel that pushes the big ones
up and the little ones down.

Shake to Their Places

You laugh? You don't believe that? Maybe your roads are so good and
smooth that things do not shake on the road to town. But back in the
Black Swamp of Ohio we had corduroy roads. Did you ever see a corduroy
road? It was a layer of logs in the mud. Riding over it was the poetry
of motion! The wagon "hit the high spots." And as I hauled a wagon-bed
full of apples to the cider-mill over a corduroy road, the apples
sorted out by the jolting. The big apples would try to get to the top.
The little, runty apples would try to hold a mass meeting at the bottom.

I saw that for thirty years before I saw it. Did you ever notice how
long you have to see most things before you see them? I saw that when I
played marbles. The big marbles would shake to the top of my pocket and
the little ones would rattle down to the bottom.

You children try that tomorrow. Do not wait thirty years to learn that
the big ones shake up and the little ones shake down. Put some big ones
and some little things of about the same density in a box or other
container and shake them. You will see the larger things shake upward
and the smaller shake downward. You will see every thing shake to the
place its size determines. A little larger one shakes a little higher,
and a little smaller one a little lower.

When things find their place, you can shake on till doomsday, but you
cannot change the place of one of the objects.

Mix them up again and shake. Watch them all shake back as they were
before, the largest on top and the smallest at the bottom.

Lectures in Cans

At this place the lecturer exhibits a glass jar more than half-filled
with small white beans and a few walnuts.

Let us try that right on the platform. Here is a glass jar and inside
of it you see two sizes of objects--a lot of little white beans and
some walnuts. You will pardon me for bringing such a simple and crude
apparatus before you in a lecture, but I ask your forbearance. I am
discovering that we can hear faster thru the eye than thru the ear. I
want to make this so vivid that you will never forget it, and I do not
want these young people to live thirty years before they see it.

If there