He might, for example, calculate how long a London Chatham and Dover train would take to travel from Capella to the Great Bear, supposing it ran(!) day and night. Or again, he might reckon how long it would take an average bargee to circumnavigate the canals of Mars.
[Illustration: FIG. 6 ACCURATELY TELLS HOW MANY BEANS MAKE FIVE.]
Or yet again he might work out how many threepenny pieces it would require piled one above the other to reach from Whitechapel to the Moon.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Number of hams in Tottenham Court Road X George Washington's "Record" X Number of Graces X Number of "Macs" X Number of fingers on the human hand X Total number in a half-dozen X Number of lives possessed by a cat X Number in an octave X Number of wet days in a week X Number of sides to a square X
Scientific diagrams of such things as these would be extremely interesting, and nearly as useful as those of the present article.
[Illustration: "IT WAS ALL I COULD DO TO GUARD MYSELF FROM THE FURIOUS LUNGES OF THE COUNT."]
Never did my prospects seem worse or more gloomy than in the winter of 188-.
I had returned to England from a five years' sojourn in the more unsettled parts of British Columbia, after an unsuccessful pursuit of fortune in that land of gold, mountains, and timber. It was at Felixstowe--that charming watering-place, where my people then had a house--that I first came into relation with those who were afterwards to exercise such influences for good or evil on my life.
I was walking round the place renewing my acquaintance with the English life, when I was confronted with the most beautiful face I have ever seen. It belonged to a young girl of eighteen or nineteen, quietly dressed in a green walking-skirt and tan jacket, while her blue eyes looked out from under a mass of golden hair, in turn surmounted by a sailor hat.
As her eyes for a moment met mine, I was conscious of that magnetic thrill which I was told afterwards my mistress exercised on all those with whom she came in contact. She was accompanied by a lady somewhat older than herself, and whom, from her likeness, I mentally set down as being, if not her sister, at any rate her near relative. As soon as I conveniently could, I turned round and followed them, and noticed them enter a house which--as a perusal of the Felixstowe visitors' list, hastily bought and perused, informed me--was at present occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Delaine.