TOM RESPECTS THE FLEA
“Noon!” says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot around his
feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve the
difference didn’t amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right north
of us or right south of us, one or t’other, and he reckoned by the
weather and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles
north, too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.
Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the
world, unless it might be some kinds of birds—a wild pigeon, maybe, or
a railroad.
But Tom said he had read about railroads in England going nearly a
hundred miles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird in
the world that could do that—except one, and that was a flea.
“A flea? Why, Mars Tom, in de fust place he ain’t a bird, strickly
speakin’—”
“He ain’t a bird, eh? Well, then, what is he?”
“I don’t rightly know, Mars Tom, but I speck he’s only jist a’ animal.
No, I reckon dat won’t do, nuther, he ain’t big enough for a’ animal.
He mus’ be a bug. Yassir, dat’s what he is, he’s a bug.”
“I bet he ain’t, but let it go. What’s your second place?”
“Well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes a long ways, but a
flea don’t.”
“He don’t, don’t he? Come, now, what _is_ a long distance, if you
know?”
“Why, it’s miles, and lots of ’em—anybody knows dat.”
“Can’t a man walk miles?”
“Yassir, he kin.”
“As many as a railroad?”
“Yassir, if you give him time.”
“Can’t a flea?”
“Well—I s’pose so—ef you gives him heaps of time.”
“Now you begin to see, don’t you, that _distance_ ain’t the thing to
judge by, at all; it’s the time it takes to go the distance _in_ that
_counts_, ain’t it?”
“Well, hit do look sorter so, but I wouldn’t ’a’ b’lieved it, Mars
Tom.”
[Illustration: “And where’s your railroad, alongside of a flea?”]
“It’s a matter of _proportion_, that’s what it is; and when you come to
gauge a thing’s speed by its size, where’s your bird and your man and
your railroad, alongside of a flea? The fastest man can’t run more than
about ten miles in an hour—not much over ten thousand times his own
length. But all the books says any common ordinary third-class flea can
jump a hundred and fifty times his own length; yes, and he can make
five jumps a second too—seven hundred and fifty times his own length,
in one little second—for he don’t fool away any time stopping and
starting—he does them both at the same time; you’ll see, if you try to
put your finger on him. Now that’s a common, ordinary, third-class
flea’s gait; but you take an Eyetalian _first_-class, that’s been the
pet of the nobility all his life, and hasn’t ever knowed what want or
sickness or exposure was, and he can jump more than three hundred times
his own length, and keep it up all day, five such jumps every second,
which is fifteen hundred times his own length. Well, suppose a man
could go fifteen hundred times his own length in a second—say, a mile
and a half. It’s ninety miles a minute; it’s considerable more than
five thousand miles an hour. Where’s your man _now?_—yes, and your
bird, and your railroad, and your balloon? Laws, they don’t amount to
shucks ’longside of a flea. A flea is just a comet b’iled down small.”
[Illustration: “Where’s your man now?”]
Jim was a good deal astonished, and so was I. Jim said:
“Is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin’ en no lies, Mars Tom?”
“Yes, they are; they’re perfectly true.”
“Well, den, honey, a body’s got to respec’ a flea. I ain’t had no
respec’ for um befo’, sca’sely, but dey ain’t no gittin’ roun’ it, dey
do deserve it, dat’s certain.”
“Well, I bet they do. They’ve got ever so much more sense, and brains,
and brightness, in proportion to their size, than any other cretur in
the world. A person can learn them ’most anything; and they learn it
quicker than any other cretur, too. They’ve been learnt to haul little
carriages in harness, and go this way and that way and t’other way
according to their orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers,
doing it as exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. They’ve
been learnt to do all sorts of hard and troublesome things. S’pose you
could cultivate a flea up to the size of a man, and keep his natural
smartness a-growing and a-growing right along up, bigger and bigger,
and keener and keener, in the same proportion—where’d the human race
be, do you reckon? That flea would be President of the United States,
and you couldn’t any more prevent it than you can prevent lightning.”
[Illustration: “That flea would be President of the United States, and
you couldn’t prevent it”]
“My lan’, Mars Tom, I never knowed dey was so much _to_ de beas’. No,
sir, I never had no idea of it, and dat’s de fac’.”
“There’s more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any other
cretur, man or beast, in proportion to size. He’s the interestingest of
them all. People have so much to say about an ant’s strength, and an
elephant’s, and a locomotive’s. Shucks, they don’t begin with a flea.
He can lift two or three hundred times his own weight. And none of them
can come anywhere near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his
own, and is very particular, and you can’t fool him; his instinct, or
his judgment, or whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and
don’t ever make a mistake. People think all humans are alike to a flea.
It ain’t so. There’s folks that he won’t go near, hungry or not hungry,
and I’m one of them. I’ve never had one of them on me in my life.”
“Mars Tom!”
“It’s so; I ain’t joking.”
“Well, sah, I hain’t ever heard de likes o’ dat befo’.” Jim couldn’t
believe it, and I couldn’t; so we had to drop down to the sand and git
a supply and see. Tom was right. They went for me and Jim by the
thousand, but not a one of them lit on Tom. There warn’t no explaining
it, but there it was and there warn’t no getting around it. He said it
had always been just so, and he’d just as soon be where there was a
million of them as not; they’d never touch him nor bother him.
We went up to the cold weather to freeze ’em out, and stayed a little
spell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazying
along twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we’d been doing for
the last few hours. The reason was, that the longer we was in that
solemn, peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of
soothed down in us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we
got to feeling, and the more we got to liking the desert, and then
loving it. So we had cramped the speed down, as I was saying, and was
having a most noble good lazy time, sometimes watching through the
glasses, sometimes stretched out on the lockers reading, sometimes
taking a nap.
It didn’t seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to
find land and git ashore, but it was. But we had got over that—clean
over it. We was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and
didn’t want to be anywheres else. Why, it seemed just like home; it
’most seemed as if I had been born and raised in it, and Jim and Tom
said the same. And always I had had hateful people around me, a-nagging
at me, and pestering of me, and scolding, and finding fault, and
fussing and bothering, and sticking to me, and keeping after me, and
making me do this, and making me do that and t’other, and always
selecting out the things I didn’t want to do, and then giving me Sam
Hill because I shirked and done something else, and just aggravating
the life out of a body all the time; but up here in the sky it was so
still and sunshiny and lovely, and plenty to eat, and plenty of sleep,
and strange things to see, and no nagging and no pestering, and no good
people, and just holiday all the time. Land, I warn’t in no hurry to
git out and buck at civilization again. Now, one of the worst things
about civilization is, that anybody that gits a letter with trouble in
it comes and tells you all about it and makes you feel bad, and the
newspapers fetches you the troubles of everybody all over the world,
and keeps you downhearted and dismal ’most all the time, and it’s such
a heavy load for a person. I hate them newspapers; and I hate letters;
and if I had my way I wouldn’t allow nobody to load his troubles on to
other folks he ain’t acquainted with, on t’other side of the world,
that way. Well, up in a balloon there ain’t any of that, and it’s the
darlingest place there is.
We had supper, and that night was one of the prettiest nights I ever
see. The moon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer; and once
we see a lion standing all alone by himself, just all alone on the
earth, it seemed like, and his shadder laid on the sand by him like a
puddle of ink. That’s the kind of moonlight to have.
Mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn’t want to go to sleep.
Tom said we was right in the midst of the Arabian Nights now. He said
it was right along here that one of the cutest things in that book
happened; so we looked down and watched while he told about it, because
there ain’t anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that
a book has talked about. It was a tale about a camel-driver that had
lost his camel, and he come along in the desert and met a man, and
says:
“Have you run across a stray camel to-day?”
And the man says:
“Was he blind in his left eye?”
“Yes.”
“Had he lost an upper front tooth?”
“Yes.”
“Was his off hind leg lame?”
“Yes.”
“Was he loaded with millet-seed on one side and honey on the other?”
“Yes, but you needn’t go into no more details—that’s the one, and I’m
in a hurry. Where did you see him?”
“I hain’t seen him at all,” the man says.
“Hain’t seen him at all? How can you describe him so close, then?”
“Because when a person knows how to use his eyes, everything has got a
meaning to it; but most people’s eyes ain’t any good to them. I knowed
a camel had been along, because I seen his track. I knowed he was lame
in his off hind leg because he had favored that foot and trod light on
it, and his track showed it. I knowed he was blind on his left side
because he only nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. I
knowed he had lost an upper front tooth because where he bit into the
sod his teeth-print showed it. The millet-seed sifted out on one
side—the ants told me that; the honey leaked out on the other—the flies
told me that. I know all about your camel, but I hain’t seen him.”
Jim says:
“Go on, Mars Tom, hit’s a mighty good tale, and powerful interestin’.”
“That’s all,” Tom says.
“_All?_” says Jim, astonished. “What ’come o’ de camel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mars Tom, don’t de tale say?”
“No.”
Jim puzzled a minute, then he says:
“Well! Ef dat ain’t de beatenes’ tale ever I struck. Jist gits to de
place whah de intrust is gittin’ red-hot, en down she breaks. Why, Mars
Tom, dey ain’t no _sense_ in a tale dat acts like dat. Hain’t you got
no _idea_ whether de man got de camel back er not?”
“No, I haven’t.”
I see myself there warn’t no sense in the tale, to chop square off that
way before it come to anything, but I warn’t going to say so, because I
could see Tom was souring up pretty fast over the way it flatted out
and the way Jim had popped on to the weak place in it, and I don’t
think it’s fair for everybody to pile on to a feller when he’s down.
But Tom he whirls on me and says:
“What do _you_ think of the tale?”
Of course, then, I had to come out and make a clean breast and say it
did seem to me, too, same as it did to Jim, that as long as the tale
stopped square in the middle and never got to no place, it really
warn’t worth the trouble of telling.
Tom’s chin dropped on his breast, and ’stead of being mad, as I
reckoned he’d be, to hear me scoff at his tale that way, he seemed to
be only sad; and he says:
“Some people can see, and some can’t—just as that man said. Let alone a
camel, if a cyclone had gone by, _you_ duffers wouldn’t ’a’ noticed the
track.”
I don’t know what he meant by that, and he didn’t say; it was just one
of his irrulevances, I reckon—he was full of them, sometimes, when he
was in a close place and couldn’t see no other way out—but I didn’t
mind. We’d spotted the soft place in that tale sharp enough, he
couldn’t git away from that little fact. It graveled him like the
nation, too, I reckon, much as he tried not to let on.