Milliner

“ James Williams sat a girl in a loose tan jacket and a straw hat adorned with grapes and roses. Only in dreams and milliners’ shops do we, alas! gather grapes and roses at one swipe. This girl gazed with large blue eyes, credulous, when the megaphone man roared his doctrine that millionaires were things about which we should be concerned. ”

“ One million is a large number! "If you had a million shillings to count one by one, and did it as fast as you could for ten hours a day, it would take a fortnight; and the million shillings would weigh nearly five tons, or be a heavy load for a railway truck." ”

“ Introduce the metric system, and there would be an upheaval—the tailor, the bootmaker, dressmaker, butcher, baker, anyone and everyone engaged in trade; everyone who is a buyer, who is a seller, would have to revise not only his arithmetic but his appliances. ”

“ We should feel dumbfounded if the new calculation were to be a matter of millions, but actually we are to imagine a magnification to the extent of billions. This sounds almost like a fable when expressed in words. But a million is related to a billion in about the same way as a fairly wide city street to the width of the Atlantic Ocean. Our Mont Blanc sinks to insignificance. In the above calculation it would have to be replaced by a mountain 50 million miles high. ”

“ The second and last point in this consideration of scale is the enormously expensive element of uncertainty. It would be expensive enough to have to arrange for so much movement and so much clothing and equipment upon a wholly novel and increased scale, if we knew exactly what that movement and that equipment was to be—if, so to speak, you could take the problem statically and work out its details in an office as you work out the costings of a great shop or factory. ”

“ Herbert Spencer has pertinently asked, “By whose advice is it that the metric system of weights, measures, and values is to be adopted? Is it by the advice of those who spend their lives in weighing and receiving payments for goods? Is it that the men who alone are concerned in portioning out commodities of one or other kind to customers, and who have every minute need for using this or that sub-division of weights or measures, have demanded to use the decimal system? ”

“ THE ultimate triumph of the metric system may be regarded as safe, beyond peradventure; no event still in the future is more certain. A universal system of weights, measures, and currency, is an imperative demand of advancing civilization; and this particular solution is worthy of the great problem, fit for all countries and for all time. It has the start, the prestige, the substantial merits, the already large adoption, which insure universality. ”

“ Mill′wright, a wright or mechanic who builds and repairs mills.—Go through the mill, to undergo suffering or experience sufficient to fit one for certain duties or privileges; See through a millstone, to see far into or through difficult questions. [A.S. miln—L. mola, a mill—molāre, to grind.]
Mill, mil, n. (U.S.) the thousandth part of a dollar. [L. mille, a thousand.]
Millennium, mil-len′i-um, n. a thousand years: the thousand years during which, as some believe, Christ will personally reign on the earth.—adj. ”

“ The detachment who had commenced the answer, being in this way relieved, retired to their dinners.
‘It’s a gey lang answer,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘isn’t it?’ Mac looked black. ‘Better take a seat; you will appreciate the children’s intelligence much better.’
It was then close on three o’clock, and still the children kept on singing ‘Millions of millions of millions.’
‘Wonderful children,’ I remarked. ‘How many more times will they say “Millions of millions of millions”?’ I inquired. ”

“ 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 international electric units are metric units. It has come into our currency. A nickel weighs, by law, five grams, and a dollar twenty-five. The U. S. foot is defined by law as a certain fraction of the international meter.
The colonies of Great Britain, less conservative than their mother country, have recently urged Great Britain to adopt the metric system. In August, 1902, the prime ministers of the colonies officially urged upon the Secretary of State the importance of adopting the metric system throughout the British Empire. ”

“ If an attempt were made deliberately to construct a medley of weight and measures as a burlesque, for sensible practical people to make sport of, it may be questioned whether such a farcical hypothetical medley would be more illogical, incoherent or cumbersome than our own. Yet it would seem that ours is not worse than the old French, or German, or Austrian, systems that preceded the metric system in those countries, respectively. ”

“ The portion of the terrestrial globe which is covered by water is estimated at upwards of eighty millions of acres. This fluid mass comprises two billions two hundred and fifty millions of cubic miles, forming a spherical body of a diameter of sixty leagues, the weight of which would be three quintillions of tons. To comprehend the meaning of these figures, it is necessary to observe that a quintillion is to a billion as a billion is to unity; in other words, there are as many billions in a quintillion as there are units in a billion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Suddenly her eyes rested on Rudyard Byng, and something in the rough power of the head arrested her attention, and the thought flashed through her mind: "How wonderful to have got so much at thirty-three! Three millions at thirty-three—and millions beget millions!"
... Power—millions meant power; millions made ready the stage for the display and use of every gift, gave the opportunity for the full occupation of all personal qualities, made a setting for the jewel of life and beauty, which reflected, intensified every ray of merit. ”

“ Every day I fixed my thoughts upon another million; and, as all who know anything about the million-mania will tell you, the act of fixing the thought upon a million, when one has earned the right to acquire millions, makes that million yours, makes all who stand between you and it aggressors to be clawed down and torn to pieces. ”

“ All these figures, friend Barbicane, are savants' figures, which reach the ear but say nothing to the mind."
"But they are obliged to have recourse to figures."
"No. It would be much better to compare. A billion signifies nothing. An object of comparison explains everything. Example—When you tell me that Uranus is 76 times larger than the earth, Saturn 900 times larger, Jupiter 1,300 times larger, the sun 1,300,000 times larger, I am not much wiser. ”

“ In answering you I am really using those weapons by which alone you say you can be defeated, and which are I confess equally applicable to your measure and to mine, I mean the argument of the non-existence of any measure of absolute value. There is no such thing; your measure as well as mine will measure variations arising from more or less labour being required to produce commodities, but the difficulty is respecting the varying proportions which go to labour and profits. ”

“ Has not the commercial world been crying aloud for decimal coinage and decimal weights and measures, and are not educated men constantly finding some objections, and will they not continue to do so, until some giant mind springs up able to grasp the herculean task, and force the boon upon the community? ”

“ Yet it is only three days since Million and I went down to Chancery Lane together to interview the old lawyer person on the subject of her new riches. I shall never forget that interview. I shall never be able to forget the radiant little face of Million at the end of it all, when the kind old gentleman offered to advance her some of her own money "down on the nail," and did advance her five pounds in cash—five golden, gleaming, solid sovereigns! ”

“ The value of 100, 1000, 10,000 dollars is well estimated by the mind; so is that of the tenth or the hundredth of a dollar. Few transactions are above 163 or below these limits. The expediency of attending to the size of the money Unit will be evident, to any one who will consider how inconvenient it would be to a manufacturer or merchant, if, instead of the yard for measuring cloth, either the inch or the mile had been made the Unit of Measure.
II. The most easy ratio of multiplication and division, is that by ten. Every one knows the facility of Decimal Arithmetic. ”

“ Is it in contemplation with the House of Representatives to extend a like improvement to our measures and weights, and to arrange them also in a decimal ratio? The facility which this would introduce into the vulgar arithmetic would, unquestionably, be soon and sensibly felt by the whole mass of the people, who would thereby be enabled to compute for themselves whatever they should have occasion to buy, to sell, or to measure, which the present complicated and difficult ratios place beyond their computation for the most part. ”

“ Yet in fact, how is a hundred millions of miles a great distance? how is a hundred millions of times a great ratio? Not in itself: this greatness is no quality of the numbers which can be proved like their mathematical properties; on the contrary, all that absolutely belongs to number, space, and ratio, must, we know demonstrably, be equally true of the largest and the smallest. ”

“ Appreciating the weakness of legislative enactment compared with popular sentiment, and feeling that the real battle was to be won in familiarizing the people with the metric system, he took pains to interest the makers of scales and rulers and other devices for measurement in adopting the units and graduations of the metric system, and to have the proper tables introduced into school arithmetics. ”

“ Many calculations have been made of the numbers of buffalo seen at one time; but, after all, these can be little more than guesswork. Terms like thousands and millions, so commonly used, have little or no meaning, for we have no standard of comparison by which to measure them. All the earlier writers, however graphic their descriptions of their numbers, fail to impress the reader, because no one could comprehend such numbers except by seeing them. Dr. Allen, Mr. Hornaday, Colonel Dodge, and many of the old explorers, give much matter bearing on this subject. ”

“ The milreis, 1000 reis of the par value of 4s. 5d. (or 4·5 milreis to the pound sterling) and the conto of reis (1000 milreis) are used for the calculation of large sums. Gold pieces of 10, 5, 2 and I milreis were coined up to 1891; 10, 5, and 2 testoon (testão) pieces, worth respectively 1000, 500 and 200 reis, are coined in silver; testoons of 100 reis and half testoons of 50 reis, in nickel; pieces of 20, 10 and 5 reis in bronze. ”

“ What is a billion, or, rather, what conception can we form of such a quantity? We may say that a billion is a million of millions, and can easily represent it thus: 1,000,000,000,000. But a schoolboy's calculation will show how entirely the mind is incapable of conceiving such numbers. ”

“ But it is enough to have shown the reader that, despite Mill’s contention to the contrary, the calculation is one which is based on the simplest and most indisputable principles, and that not only in a theoretical, but in the most strictly practical sense, what great men produce, when they co-operate with average men by directing them, is the amount or degree in which the total result produced exceeds or excels that which was produced by average men when unaided, and would be again produced by them were the great man’s aid withdrawn. ”

“ The question now arising is quite another thing, viz.:—Whether we are to throw overboard an existing, established, and, so to speak, ingrained system—adopt the metre as it stands for our standard—adopt, moreover, its decimal subdivisions, and carry out the change into all its train of consequences, to the rejection of our entire system of weights, measures, and coins. If we adopt the metre we can not stop short of this. ”

“ Standards of length are preserved by a Bureau of Weights and Measures in most countries. Delambre, a French authority on the decimal system of measures, taught at the beginning of the nineteenth century that magnitudes as small as the hundredth of a millimeter are incapable of observation. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures now guarantees to determine two or three ten-thousandths of a millimeter. So much has the science of measurement progressed in a century. ”

“ The Propaganda of the Metric System I have read many books and many articles and letters in newspapers and scientific periodicals advocating the compulsory use of the metric system, optional amongst us since 1897, but which no trade, industry or profession will adopt, and I have almost invariably found that the writers knew the metric system imperfectly, and always that they knew their own very badly. ”

“ Any calculation which can be made by the French metric system, we can make with equal ease by the British system, and hundreds of calculations can be made much more easily by the British system than by the metric system itself. ”