Some Cover the Length of the Earth’s
Belt Several Times in the Ordinary
Span of Three Score Years.
The greatest things of the world reduced to the unit which, many times
multiplied, goes to compose them, do not seem great at all.
The sum of all the money on earth would be made up of just so many
pennies, and a penny is an insignificant coin. In just the same way the
distance around the earth is very great, yet it is numbered in miles,
and a mile is not much of a walk.
For instance, how far will a man walk in a lifetime? It is a little
difficult to fix the average mileage per day of the average man. Some
men are fond of walking. Others ride a bicycle or patronize the
trolley-cars. But it is safe to say that every man walks two miles a
day, if only in stirring about his room or office.
If a man lives to be thirty years old he will walk twenty-one thousand
nine hundred miles. The three-miles-a-day man will cover thirty-two
thousand eight hundred and fifty. The man who believes in a daily
constitutional of five miles will walk fifty-four thousand seven
hundred and fifty miles. The circumference of the earth is twenty-four
thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine miles. If a man walks two miles
a day he will find, after he has walked for thirty years, he would
still have some distance to walk in order to complete the circuit of
the globe.
Walking three miles a day he will go around the world once and have a
neat margin besides. The five-miles-a-day man will walk around twice
and have a few thousand-odd miles to his credit.
At forty this man will have made three trips, and at sixty his
pedometer will indicate one hundred and nine thousand five hundred
miles, which means that he will have walked around the earth four
times and he will still have about two thousand miles to the good on
the fifth trip.