It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt or the untruth of a single second, I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten billions of years, Nor plann’d and built one thing after another as an architect plans and builds a house.

I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.

Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal; I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and how I was conceived in my mother’s womb is equally wonderful, And pass’d from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of summers and winters to articulate and walk⁠—all this is equally wonderful.