"Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer Abroad (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"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."
"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."
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."
"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