Page:The Gully of Bluemansdyke.djvu/150

 THE MAN FROM ARCHANGEL.

the fourth day of March, in the year 1867, being at that time in my five-and-twentieth year, I wrote down the following words in my note-book, the result of much mental perturbation and conflict:—

"The solar system, amidst a countless number of other systems as large as itself, rolls ever silently through space in the direction of the constellation of Hercules. The great spheres of which it is composed spin and spin through the eternal void ceaselessly and noiselessly. Of these one of the smallest and most insignificant is that conglomeration of solid and of liquid particles which we have named the earth. It whirls onwards now as it has done before my birth, and will do after my death—a revolving mystery, coming none know whence, and going none know whither. Upon the outer crust of this moving mass crawl many mites, of whom I, John McVittie, am one, helpless, impotent, being dragged aimlessly through space. Yet such