HOMINITIC GEOGRAPHY.

[Said to have been prepared for the late Exhibition in Slowtown Academy.]

Dramatis Persona-TEACHER AND PUPILS.

Each pupil may recite more or less, according to the number of pupils. Names are left to the option of the teacher.]

Teacher. What lesson have we to-day?

Pupil. The Anthropean Confederacy.

T. Of how many states does this confederacy consist?

P. Five.

T. Name them.

P. Matter-o'-money or Matrimony, Single-Blessedness, Despondency, Perfection, and Bliss.

T. Give the situation of the confederacy.

P. Its situation is somewhat uncertain, extending through many degrees high and low. It is, however, bisected by the meridian of life. T. Bound the state of Matrimony.

P. It is bounded on the north by the land of Milk-and-Honey, on the east by Single-Blessedness, on the south by Despondency and Perfection, and on the west by Bliss.

T. What can you say concerning this state?

P. Very little is known respecting it. Those who have attempted to explore it have seldom returned. It is popularly supposed to be a pleasant country, abounding in delights; but the few who have escaped by way of the Divorce and Desertion Railroad represent it as especially productive of briers and broomstick material.

T. What is the character of its inhabitants?

P. They are very peculiar. They often disturb the peace of their neighbors by petty commotions. Their literature is said to consist principally of curtain lectures-a species of amusement unknown in other countries.

T. What is the capital of this state?

P. Loveburgh, on the River Truelove. A populous town, yet utterly without public spirit.

T. State the peculiarity of the Truelove.

P. It is an insignificant stream, and, frequently dries up. In freshet seasons it is very turbulent. The old proverb says, its course never runs smooth.

T. What town in the interior, noted for bald heads, elopements, etc.? P. Henpeckton. Its inhabitants are a dismal race. The men undergo great sufferings. The women possess all authority, and oppress the town. T. Would any of you like to live there?

Class (emphatically). No, sir.

T. In what state do we live?

P. In the state of Single-Blessedness.

T. Bound it.

P. It is bounded on the north by the Gulf of Oblivion, on the east by Time's Ocean, on the south by Despondency, and on the west by Matrimony.

T. Describe this state.

P. It is the most delightful state of the confederacy. The inhabitants are gay, and give much attention to the fine arts-pleasing, deceiving, and the like. Great accuracy has been attained in dress, smiling, and in articulating the language.

T. What are the chief occupations of the people?

P. Hunting and fishing.

T. For what?

P. The men hunt for companions, and women fish for beaux.

T. What is the capital?

P. Flirt-town, on Jilting Creek.

T. For what is Flirt-town noted?

P. For its marriageable old women and gay young men ; for broken hearts and sore disappointments; also, for the large number of persons annually reported as "engaged."

T. Are there any other important towns in the state?

P. Breach-of-Promiseville and Coquetton; situated near each other.
T. For the next lesson, the class may take the states of Despondency

and Perfection. Any questions to be asked about the lesson?

P. (raising his hand.) Do you live in Flirt-town, on Jilting Creek? T. Why, Johnny?

P. I heard ma tell some ladies the other day that you were engaged to Susan Miller.

T. (sternly.) John, you may stay after school. The class is dismissed.

IMAGINATION.-The. beautiful faculty of the imagination, when it has been properly trained, is a perpetual well-spring of delight to the soul; but, when foully or improperly trained, is a source of constant uneasiness. Its functions are mixed up with all our joys and our miseries. The words Fancy and Imagination are often used as if they meant the same thing. Fancy is the painter of the soul. Imagination has an ampler mission, and does more than mirror outside objects to the soul. It takes up the conceptions we have formed, and improves on them; arranges them in novel combinations; and, from the exact delineation or portrait of things transmitted through the senses and retained by memory, it works up new ideas Imagination is the poet of the soul.

WONDERFUL PROPERTIES OF FIGURES.

THOUG

HOUGH figures constitute a universal language among the civilized nations of the earth, and maintain such an exalted character for honesty and truth that it has passed into a proverb that "figures can not lie;" yet they are treated as the mere slaves of calculation, without any regard for that respect and consideration to which their peculiar qualities entitle them. To rescue them from the degradation of being looked upon as mere conveniences, let us see if they are not possessed of certain intrinsic properties which shall excite our wonder and admiration.

Few people have a clear conception of even a million of dollars." Mr. Longworth, who recently died at Cincinnati, was said to be worth fifteen millions of dollars. How many days would it take to count that sum, at the rate of fifty dollars a minute, working steadily ten hours each day? While some are guessing four or five days, another a week, another two weeks or a month, the operation may be made mentally. Fifteen millions divided by fifty gives three hundred thousand minutes; divided by sixty gives five thousand hours; divided by ten gives five hundred days! An answer which is sure to strike your guessers with amazement; a remarkable instance of the difference between guessing and thinking.

The powers of the human understanding are limited. The increase of figures has no limits. Our knowledge of numbers, therefore, must necessarily be limited. But, like every other subject, the more we study and think about it, the more we shall know. A distinguished philosopher, to whom the world is indebted for some of the grandest truths of science, has said that, without any extraordinary endowment of mind, by thinking long and deeply on this subject, point after point gradually unfolded itself to his mental vision, until he was able to comprehend the mighty laws which control the universe.

The child who has learned to count as far as three, has an idea of that number; but the number thirteen is quite beyond his comprehension. The savage gets along very well with his arithmetic, so long as he is not required to go beyond the numeration of his fingers and toes; but any greater number quite bewilders his imagination, and, in despair, he refers to the hairs of the head, the leaves of the forest, or the sands on the seashore, to express his overwhelming sense of its magnitude. Every young student of history has laughed at the extreme simplicity and ignorance of the Indian whom Powhatan sent to England to see the country and find out how many people were there. As soon as the shores of England were reached, the "poor Indian" procured a long stick and commenced to cut a notch on it for every one he saw. Of course, he was soon obliged to stop. On his return, Powhatan, among many questions, asked how many people he had seen. "Count the stars in the sky," was the reply, "the leaves on the trees, or the sands on the shore; for such is the number of

the English." Perhaps this untutored child of the forest was not so very far astray after all; for the stars in both hemispheres, visible to the naked eye, do not exceed the number of ten thousand. The hairs of the head and the leaves of the trees may be easily counted, and the sands of the seashore are by no means innumerable.

POWER OF CIPHERS.

The enlightened man may have a clear understanding of thousands, and even millions; but much beyond that he can form no distinct idea. A simple example, and one easily solved, will illustrate the observation. If all the vast bodies of water that cover nearly three-fourths of the whole surface of the globe were emptied, drop by drop, into one grand reservoir, the whole number of drops could be written by the two words, "eighteen septillions," and expressed in figures by annexing twenty-four ciphers to the number 18 (18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). Man might as well attempt to explore the bounds of eternity, as to form any rational idea of the units embodied in the expression above; for, although the aggregate of drops is indicated by figures in the space of only one inch and a half of ordinary print, yet, if each particular drop were noted by a separate stroke like the figure 1, it would form a line of marks sufficiently long to wind round the sun six thousand billions of times!

Now, observe, if you please, the marvelous power or value which the ciphers, insignificant by themselves, give to the significant figures 18. The young reader will be surprised to learn that the use of the cipher to determine the value of any particular figure, which is now practiced by every schoolboy, was unknown to the ancients. Therefore, among the Greeks and Romans, and other nations of antiquity, arithmetical operations were exceedingly tedious and difficult. They had to reckon with little pebbles, shells, or beads, used as counters, to transact the ordinary business of life. Even the great Cicero, in his oration for Roscius, the actor, in order to express 300,000, had to make use of the very awkward and cumbrous notation, cccrɔɔɔ ccciɔɔɔ ccciɔɔɔ. How very odd this seems-"in the year of our Lord MDCCCLXVI!" (1866.)

Many curious and interesting things might be said concerning the history of numerical characters used in ancient and modern times; but, not to prolong this article, they must be reserved for some future occasion.

CURIOUS CALCULATIONS.

The simple interest of one cent, at six per cent per annum, from the commencement of the Christian era to the close of the year 1864, would be but the trifling sum of one dollar, eleven cents, and eight mills; but if the same principal, at the same rate and time had been allowed to accumulate at compound interest, it would require the enormous number of 84,840 billions of globes of solid gold, each equal to the earth in magnitude, to pay

the interest; and if the sum were equally divided among the inhabitants of the earth, now estimated to be one thousand millions, every man, woman, and child would receive 84,840 golden worlds for an inheritance. Were all these globes placed side by side in a direct line, it would take lightning itself, that can girdle the earth in the wink of an eye, 73,000 years to travel from end to end. And if a Parrot-gun were discharged at one extremity, while a man was stationed at the other,--light traveling one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles in a second-the initial velocity of a cannon-ball being about 1500 feet per second, and in this case supposed to continue at the same rate, and sound moving through the atmosphere 1120 feet in a second, he would see the flash after waiting one hundred and ten thousand years; the ball would reach him in seventy-four billions of years; but he would not hear the report till the end of one thousand millions of centuries.

The present system of figures is called the Arabic method, but it should be more properly termed the Indian method, because it had its origin among the Hindoos of India, from whom the Arabs learned it; and they, in turn, carried the art into Spain, where they practiced it during their long occupation of that country.

The publication of their astronomical tables, in the form of almanacs, was the principal means of gradually spreading it abroad among the surrounding nations; but so slow was the progress, that it was not generally established until about the middle of the sixteenth century.

THE

THE NUMBER OF LANGUAGES.

HE actual number of languages in the world is probably beyond the dreams of ordinary people. The geographer Balbi enumerated eight. hundred and sixty distinct languages, and five thousand dialects. Adelung, another modern writer on this subject, reckons up three thousand and sixty-four languages and dialects existing, and which have existed. Even after we have allowed either of these as the number of languages, we must acknowledge the existence of almost infinite minor diversities, for almost every province has a tongue more or less peculiar; and this we may well believe to be the case thoughout the world at large. It is said that there are little islands, lying close together in the South Sea, the inhabitants of which do not understand each other. Of the eight hundred and sixty distinct languages enumerated by Balbi, fifty-three belong to Europe, one hundred and fourteen to Africa, one hundred and twenty-three to Asia, four hundred and seventeen to America, one hundred and seventeen to Oceanica-by which term he distinguishes the vast number of islands stretching between Hindostan and South America.