The planets are fashioned in the
same way. Jupiter you see is made up of little, squirming animal-like
units; that is because Jupiter occupies the same amount of space that
would be filled by the descendants of a single pair of Australian
rabbits in five hundred years, if left unchecked. Observe the orbit of
the earth. It is marked out in twopenny postage stamps, for
statisticians assure us that the path of the earth around the sun is
equivalent in length to all the postage stamps consumed since the
beginning of the nineteenth century, if laid end to end. In the same way
the seven rings of Saturn are made up of copper pennies, obtained by
reducing the world's annual output of gold to coins of that
denomination."
We passed into a cosy little alcove lined to the ceiling with books.
There seemed nothing out of the ordinary about them at first sight, but
my host soon undeceived me. "These," he said, "are the books that might
have been written in the last hundred years, if the time and energy that
are spent on smoking, drinking, whist, bridge, and out-door games were
devoted to the cultivation of literature.
Pages:
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