e richest story ever told,
Is California's rush for gold,

At Sutter's Mill the gold was found
The masses came from all around

As rumors first started the skeptics all laughed
Until confirmation from President Taft

Word spread out quickly of bona fide gold
The families packed up, and the east wagons rolled

They left lives at home, to try out being miners
Named for the year, they were called forty-niners

Hundreds of thousands had rushed to the site
They all saw gold nuggets, and wanted a bite!

Half came by the land, and the rest came by sea
For riches untold and some prosperity

From countries like Mexico, Chile, Peru
Then China and Britain and even France too

At first they were profiting, fortunes galore
Compared to back east they made fifteen times more!

The economy saw what was known as a boom
There was wealth to be found in a shop or saloon

But as the time passed gold was harder to find
More people had come, and more land had been mined

The average prospector did not make out well
Living was costly without gold to sell

Gold mining companies learned to survive
And only they stood by eighteen fifty-five

Gold is worth money, and it's fine decoration
But during the gold rush, it helped shape a nation

XXVIII

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DOT MAKES

In the middle of his dream, an artist awoke. He reached for his
pencil and started to draw. He started with a single dot. It took
the artist hours to finish his picture, and afterwards he collapsed
back into bed. Soon he was asleep again, still smiling from thoughts
of what he had drawn.

The dot, on the other hand, was not as happy. It looked around the
page and saw lines all around. They were long and colorful, and the
dot was neither. "I don't belong here," it thought, "I am just a
small, meaningless dot and this picture does not need me." So the
dot jumped off of the page.

It approached a newspaper that was lying nearby. There were dots all
over the newspaper. "Surely this is where I am meant to be," it said
aloud. As soon as the dot hopped onto the front page of the
newspaper, all the other dots started to yell. "You cannot stay
here!" they said. "Why not?" asked the dot. "You are dots, and you
are here."

"We are not dots," they said, "we are periods, and we belong in
books, and stories, and newspapers. You are just a dot." The dot
felt silly, so it left the newspaper.

Then the dot saw a white cube with dots on every side. "Thi