from mirrors in the stars, we might still see Moses
crossing the Red Sea, or Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden.

So important is the subject of star distance that I am tempted to give
one more illustration in order to bring before you some conception of
how vast such distances are. I shall take, as before, the nearest of
the stars so far as known to us, and I hope to be forgiven for taking
an illustration of a practical and a commercial kind instead of one
more purely scientific. I shall suppose that a railway is about to be
made from London to Alpha Centauri. The length of that railway, of
course, we have already stated: it is twenty billions of miles. So I
am now going to ask your attention to the simple question as to the
fare which it would be reasonable to charge for the journey. We shall
choose a very cheap scale on which to compute the price of a ticket.
The parliamentary rate here is, I believe, a penny for every mile. We
will make our interstellar railway fares much less even than this; we
shall arrange to travel at the rate of one hundred miles for every
penny. That, surely, is moderate enough. If the charges were so low
that the journey from London to Edinburgh only cost fourpence, then
even the most unreasonable passenger would be surely contented. On
these terms how much do you think the fare from London to this star
ought to be? I know of one way in which to make our answer
intelligible. There is a National Debt with which your fathers are,
unhappily, only too well acquainted; you will know quite enough about
it yourselves in those days when you have to pay income tax. This debt
is so vast that the interest upon it is about sixty thousand pounds a
day, the whole amount of the National Debt being six hundred and
thirty-eight millions of pounds.

If you went to the booking-office with the whole of this mighty sum in
your pocket--but stop a moment; could you carry it in your pocket?
Certainly not, if it were in sovereigns. You would find that after you
had as many sovereigns as you could conveniently carry there would
still be some left--so many, indeed, that it would be necessary to get
a cart to help you on with the rest. When the cart had as great a load
of sovereigns as the horse could draw there would be still some more,
and you would have to get another cart; but ten carts, twenty carts,
fifty carts, would not be enough. You would want five thousand of
these before you would be able to move off to