The counting by the micrometer
took him _a week_.--You have, my full-grown friend, of these little
couriers in crimson or scarlet livery, running on your vital errands day
and night as long as you live, sixty-five billions, five hundred and
seventy thousand millions. Errors excepted.--Did I hear some gentleman
say, "Doubted?"--I am the Professor. I sit in my chair with a petard
under it that will blow me through the skylight of my lecture-room, if I
do not know what I am talking about and whom I am quoting.
Now, my dear friends, who are putting your hands to your foreheads, and
saying to yourselves that you feel a little confused, as if you had been
waltzing until things began to whirl slightly round you, is it possible
that you do not clearly apprehend the exact connection of all that I
have been saying, and its bearing on what is now to come? Listen, then.
The number of these living elements in our bodies illustrates the
incalculable multitude of our thoughts; the number of our thoughts
accounts for those frequent coincidences spoken of; these coincidences
in the world of thought illustrate those which we constantly observe in
the world of outward events, of which the presence of the young girl now
at our table, and proving to be the daughter of an old acquaintance some
of us may remember, is the special example which led me through this
labyrinth of reflections, and finally lands me at the commencement of
this young girl's story, which, as I said, I have found the time and
felt the interest to learn something of, and which I think I can tell
without wronging the unconscious subject of my brief delineation.
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