take them to our hearts, The vision
fades. We know them lost to us--Forever lost; we cannot have them back;
We miss them as we miss the dead, We mourn them as we mourn the dead.

APPENDIX V. SELECTIONS FROM AN UNFINISHED BOOK, "3,000 YEARS AMONG THE
MICROBES"

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A MICROBE, WHO, IN A FORMER EXISTENCE, HAD BEEN
A MAN--HIS PRESENT HABITAT BEING THE ORGANISM OF A TRAMP, BLITZOWSKI.
(WRITTEN AT DUBLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1905)

(See Chapter ccxxxv)

Our world (the tramp) is as large and grand and awe-compelling to
us microscopic creatures as is man's world to man. Our tramp is
mountainous, there are vast oceans in him, and lakes that are sea-like
for size, there are many rivers (veins and arteries) which are fifteen
miles across, and of a length so stupendous as to make the Mississippi
and the Amazon trifling little Rhode Island brooks by comparison. As for
our minor rivers, they are multitudinous, and the dutiable commerce
of disease which they carry is rich beyond the dreams of the American
custom-house.

Take a man like Sir Oliver Lodge, and what secret of Nature can be
hidden from him? He says: "A billion, that is a million millions,[??
Trillion D.W.] of atoms is truly an immense number, but the resulting
aggregate is still excessively minute. A portion of substance
consisting, of a billion atoms is only barely visible with the highest
power of a microscope; and a speck or granule, in order to be visible to
the naked eye, like a grain of lycopodium-dust, must be a million times
bigger still."

The human eye could see it then--that dainty little speck. But with my
microbe-eye I could see every individual of the whirling billions of
atoms that compose the speck. Nothing is ever at rest--wood, iron,
water, everything is alive, everything is raging, whirling, whizzing,
day and night and night and day, nothing is dead, there is no such thing
as death, everything is full of bristling life, tremendous life, even
the bones of the crusader that perished before Jerusalem eight centuries
ago. There are no vegetables, all things are animal; each electron is
an animal, each molecule is a collection of animals, and each has an
appointed duty to perform and a soul to be saved. Heaven was not made
for man alone, and oblivion and neglect reserved for the rest of His
creatures. He gave them life, He gave them humble services to perform,
they have performed them, and they will not be forgotten, they will have
t