Four Hundred

“ Who that has been on the Pampas but can picture to himself this party as it left the little mud-hut on the plain? The cumbrous, oscillating galera, with its shaggy, straggling four-in-hand,—the caracoling Gaucho couriers,—the negro pricking on behind,—the tall grass rolling out on every side,—the muddy pool that forms the watering-place for beasts and men scattered over a hundred miles of brookless plain,—the great sun streaming up from the herbage just in front, awakening the voices of a million insects and the carols of unnumbered birds in the thickets here and there! ”

“ A student in a library of a thousand volumes, an officer before his regiment of a thousand men upon parade, may have a pretty clear idea of the units as well as of the totals; but when we come to a thousand times a thousand, or a thousand times a million, all view of the units, for most men, probably for every man, is lost: the million for the grown man is in a great degree like the hundred for the child. ”

“ The twenty-five millions without the gates gazed at the hundred thousand within, and the more they gazed the louder and more bitter became their comment, the dimmer and the more tawdry did the glitter of it all appear to them, and the weaker and more half-hearted became the attitude of the one hundred thousand as they attempted by insolence and superciliousness to maintain the pose of their inherited superiority. ”

“ You little handful of people here—little more than half a million—imagine that you can defeat thirty-five millions, with an army of half a million, a hundred battle- ships, ten thousand cannon and a million rifles. ”

“ How, then, is work perfected in the number forty? The reason, it may be, is, because the law was given in ten precepts, and was to be preached throughout the whole world: which whole world, we are to mark, is made up of four quarters, east and west, south and north, whence the number ten, multiplied by four, comes to forty. ”

“ But if I find I get more help and strength with a certain few, why should I go with a multitude to get less? Will you draw another line than the Master's? Why should it be more sacred to worship with five hundred or five thousand than with three? If He is in the midst of them, they can not be wrong gathered! ”

“ Five million people, awake or asleep, round one—five million, each of whom is as important to himself as I to me, stealing about like thoughts in the brain of this busy city, intent, alert, as are no other five million people in the world. ”

“ Seven, one of the Three Hundred fills up the gap in the Forty, and a man is posted to the vacancy in the rank of the Three Hundred—so that 356 ever continue working in the world, and every spot is blessed by Their auspicious Feet. ”

“ Let the reader reflect a moment upon this number, till comprehends fully how many six thousand two hundred and men are, and how much force, energy, training, and rich possibilities for the good of the community and country died with those six thousand two hundred and one young, active men. ”

“ I say nothing of the hecatombs of the gods and temples a hundred feet long, altars with a hundred steps, rooms that hold a hundred men, fields of a hundred acres and other things divine and human which are classed together because they have this number for their epithet. It is a number, moreover, that has the power to adorn official rank both for war and peace, and while it lends brilliance to a company of a hundred soldiers it also confers distinction on the title of judges [24] when their number is one hundred. ”

“ But we were then so small a proportion of the whole, with our hundred and twenty thousand men, and we have become since so accustomed to count in millions, that perhaps our part in the "miracle of the Marne" is sometimes in danger of becoming a little blurred in the popular English—and American—conception of the battle. ”

“ Besides, if a hundred is [Pg 358] sometimes used for totality, as when the Lord said by way of promise to him that left all and followed Him, "He shall receive in this world an hundredfold;" [704] of which the apostle gives, as it were, an explanation when he says, "As having nothing, yet possessing all things," [705] —for even of old it had been said, The whole world is the wealth of a believer,—with how much greater reason is a thousand put for totality since it is the cube, while the other is only the square? ”

“ On the divergence of the basis itself and the confusion caused—for it is five, or it is six, or ten or twelve, or sixty or a hundred, or three hundred and sixty or the double hundred, the thousand. The reason, not clearly understood by the people, is that Six and the Dozen are first, and Sixty is a compromise in condescending to the people. ”

“ THE LAST DEPARTMENT Twelve hundred million men are spread About this Earth, and I and You Wonder, when You and I are dead, “What will those luckless millions do?” None whole or clean,” we cry, “or free from stain Of favour.” ”

“ The Retreat of the Ten Thousand, which used to worry us in our youth, was not half so formidable an affair as the Advance of the Ten Thousand, schoolboys though they be, who just now overrun the land. ”

“ There's nothing in the world I like better than to hear of such large numbers — millions, trillions — that gives one something to think about. — Upon my soul, that's quite a lot, a thousand million, more or less.
Leander
As the numbers increase, so human intelligence expands. ”

“ If we stop to reflect, it is the contrary which is really astonishing; a resistance of two hours with so small a number against a number so large was extraordinary, and surely it was not short or soon over, this battle of nineteen against four thousand. ”

“ It seems to be the opinion of the later computists, that the inhabitants of England do not exceed six millions, of which twenty thousand is the three-hundredth part. What shall we say of the humanity or the wisdom of a nation, that voluntarily sacrifices one in every three hundred to lingering destruction? ”

“ For 1,000,000, 2,000,000, etc., make the prime figure, then strike the left palm as in thousand but twice instead of only once. Billion is expressed by striking the palm three times; trillion, four times. ”

“ The first means that in a population of a million and a half, very nearly, if not quite, half a million persons were driven, or chose, to beg for food, or to accept it in charity at some period of the eight years, if not during the whole of it. ”

“ According to the computation of philosophers, the population of the world may be reckoned in round numbers at just one thousand millions; of which number the annual mortality, at the low rate of three in a hundred, is thirty millions—and that without counting the extra million or two knocked on the head in the wars. ”

“ The Count, with that infallible glance he possessed, and the knowledge of mankind which lengthened misfortune had enabled him to acquire, had picked out the best men from the crowd that daily invaded his house so soon as his intention became known, and assured himself of the co-operation of devoted comrades of tried courage, who, regarding the count's enterprise as the sole means of emerging from their frightful position, attached themselves to him with a firm resolve to do or die. ”

“ Assuming a round eighty million persons, all of whom it would be a pleasure to meet, there must be, at the lowest computation, seventy-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, three hundred and seventy-five people of whose characters I do not know enough to make my opinion of any value. ”

“ But, that you may not again attribute this fatality to my impetuous temper, I send you, my dear sir, a plain and simple narration of the affair, as a mere chronicler of facts would describe it.
The Count of O—— likes and distinguishes me. It is well known, and I have mentioned this to you a hundred times. Yesterday I dined with him. It is the day on which the nobility are accustomed to assemble at his house in the evening. I never once thought of the assembly, nor that we subalterns did not belong to such society. Well, I dined with the count ”

“ For the scripture saith, Ten thousands of ten thousands stood by Him, and thousands of thousands ministered unto Him: and they cried aloud, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Sabaoth; all creation is full of His glory. ”

“ These one billion five hundred millions will be all gathered together into one thronging assemblage, and not they only, but also, in addition, the two hundred generations of men who have preceded us, and those generations—how many we know not, God knoweth—that will still live in the earth between these days and the last general judgment. ”

“ How many fathers and mothers, how many Christian men and women, are sleeping now while their children wander over the terrible precipice right into the bottomless pit! Father, mother, where is your boy to-night?
[Pg 20]
Worth Ten Thousand Men
Let us not give heed to gloomy and discouraging remarks. In the name of our great Commander let us march on to battle and to victory. There are some generals whose name alone is worth more than a whole army of ten thousand men. In our army in the Civil War there were some whose presence sent a cheer all along the line. ”

“ I wish to count by the millions the instruments of my will! I wish, by a mere gesture, to cause the power of my arms to be felt from one confine of the world to the other! I wish to increase my kingdom to an infinite extent! ”

“ Now a very simple operation in arithmetic will show that this means a population of fifteen hundred millions, or more than the population of the whole world at the present date. Another very simple operation in arithmetic will show that if we were to go on doubling our numbers, even once in every twenty-five years, we should reach that stupendous figure at about the close of the twentieth century,--that is, in the days of our great-greatgrandchildren. ”

“ Five or six millions is a mighty number; but there are thirty millions or more left. Were it not remembered that God, although the God of battles, is not always on the side of the big battalions, our hearts might sicken at the mustering of the forces—our six millions surrounded, absorbed, as it were, by that mighty army five times greater, stretching away dim in its immensity, yet meeting us at every turn, and, directly or indirectly, contesting stubbornly every inch of ground. ”

“ As for their numbers, do not ask how many they are, that their resistance should be a possible thing; for if a thousand of them should take the field, they will meet thee in battle, and so will any number, be it less than this, or be it more. ”

“ Now, in preaching to a little country congregation, there is much less of that wear: to say nothing of the increased physical effort of addressing many hundreds of people, as compared with that of addressing eighty or ninety. It is quite possible that out of the many hundreds, there may not be very many individuals of whom, intellectually, you stand in very overwhelming awe: and the height of a crowd of a thousand people is no more than the height of the tallest man in it. Still, there is always something very imposing and awe-striking in the presence of a multitude of human beings. ”

“ They are a part of the population. However natural in the country itself, it is rather cool in English writers who talk so glibly of the ten millions (I believe there are only eight) , to pass over the very existence of four millions who must abhor the idea of separation. ”

“ This, sir, is, I believe, about the true number. There is no occasion to exaggerate, where plain truth is of so much weight and importance. But whether I put the present numbers too high or too low, is a matter of little moment. Such is the strength with which population shoots in that part of the world, that, state the numbers as high as we will, while the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends. While we are discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it. While we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two millions, we shall find we have two millions more to manage. ”

“ As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men.
But different folk have different views;
I know a person small—
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends 'em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes—
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys! ”

“ But though the transition from number definitely conceived to number without bounds is like launching into a sea, yet the conception of multitude itself is in one sense susceptible of degree. We may have the idea of a limited, or of an unbounded, multitude. ”

“ Could there have been anything more Utopian in 1860 than a picture of what to-day we take as a matter of course, the seven million children emerging every morning washed and brushed from five or six million homes in every part of the kingdom, traversing street and road and lonely woodland, going o'er moor and fell, to present themselves at a given hour at their 30,000 schools, where each of the seven million finds his or her own individual place, with books and blackboard and teacher provided? ”

“ All day long, like a shower of rain, You'd hear 'em smackin' against the wall, Tap, tap, tap, on the window pane, And they'd rise and jump at the house again Till their crippled carcases piled outside. But what did it matter if thousands died— A million wouldn't be missed at all. ”

“ The Twenty-fourth is the day of deliverance that will be handed down to generations when the Fourth is immeasurably forgotten. Three years ago, two thousand persons were congregated at the head-waters of Big Cotton-wood, commemorating independence, when messengers from the East arrived with the intelligence that the troops were on the plains. ”

“ It is quite another matter when the numbers rise to six hundred, or six thousand, or sixteen thousand, as the case may be. Then some understanding must be come to, some suitable machinery must be devised to give effect to the general desires. ”

“ Why were a million people, who all resembled each other, any way more interesting than one person? What aspiration could she help to put into the mind of this great million-armed monster that would make it worth her love or respect? ”

“ At the beginning we British youngsters had been excited spectators, but as the tale of our army's efforts and losses came home to us we crowded to the recruiting offices, by thousands and scores of thousands, until at last our volunteers could be counted by the million. ”