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 XII

! I’ll turn from this happy affair now and try to find out what was going on in this thriving, hustling city. Now you probably think of a city as a gigantic thing; for, if you go up onto a high hill, and look around across that vast array of buildings, parks, roads and distant suburbs, you not only think that it is a gigantic thing, you know it is. But, is it?

Just stop and think a bit. All such things as bulk, or width, you know by comparison only; comparison with familiar things. So, just for fun, go up in an imaginary balloon, about half way to that old Moon, which has hung aloft from your birth—(and possibly a day or two in addition)—and look down upon your “gigantic” city. How will it look? It is a small patch of various colors; but you know that, within that tiny patch, many thousands of your kind hurry back and forth; railway trains crawl out to far-away districts; and, if you can pick out a grain of dust that stands out dimly in a glow of sunlight, you may know that it is your mansion, your cabin or your hut, according to your financial status. Now, if that hardly shows up, how about you? What kind of a dot would [ 101 ]