The name of the village is St. Ulrich, and nearly all of its inhabitants are toymakers. Each household, too, has its specialty. One old woman has done nothing but carve wooden cats, dogs, wolves, sheep, goats, and elephants.
She has made those six animals her whole life long, and she has no idea of how to cut anything else. She makes them in two sizes, and turns out as nearly as possible a thousand of them a year.
She has no model or drawing of any kind to work by, but goes on steadily, unerringly, using gages of different sizes and shaping out her cats, dogs, wolves, sheep, goats, and elephants with an ease and an amount of truth to nature that would be clever if it were not utterly mechanical.
This woman learned from her mother how to carve those six animals, and her mother had learned, in like manner, from her grandmother. She has taught the art to her own granddaughter, and so it may go on being transmitted for generations.
DID YOU EVER TRY TO COUNT A BILLION?
EVEN METHUSELAH HAD NOT TIME.
It Is So Tremendous a Sum That a Conception
of It Can Hardly Be Formed
by the Human Mind.
When Americans talk about "a billion dollars" or a "billionaire" they think of a "billion" as one thousand millions. The word "billion" was originally used in France to denote a million of millions—or one million raised to the second power. At that time figures were pointed off in series of six by the French, and when the custom of pointing off by threes came into existence the French transferred the meaning of billion to one thousand millions.
Ordinarily, to-day, the French do not use the word "billion" at all, but refer to the sum of one thousand millions as a "milliard." In England "billion" means a million of millions—the more consistent meaning, in view of the origin of the word.
In the following attempt to make the meaning of a billion more vivid, the English billion, of course, is referred to.