Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 09.djvu/60

56 consideration the number of the gentleman's ancestors must have been twice as great, namely, 2,147,483,648 — more than two thousand millions, or some five hundred millions more than Earth is infested with even now. Where did all those people live? — in Mars? And to what political or other causes was due the migration to Earth, en masse, of their sons and daughters in the next generation?

Does the reader care to follow up Mr. Smith's long illustrious line any further — back to the wee, sma' years of the Christian era, for example? Well and good, but I warn him that geometrical progression, as he has already observed, "counts up." Long before his calculations have reached back to the first merry Christmas he will find Mr. Smith's ancestors — if they were really all terrestrial in their habits — piled many-deep over the entire surface of all the continents, islands and ice-floes of this distracted globe. A decent respect for the religious convictions of my countrymen forbids me even to hint at what the calculation would show if carried back to the time of Adam and Eve.

It will perhaps be observed that I have left out of consideration the circumstance that John Smith (my particular John) is not the