al enterprises, with the result that, every time the earth
traversed the solar ecliptic, the banks compelled each borrower to
repay, or to acknowledge as due, the original loan, plus six
one-hundredths of that loan. And to the depositor, the banks paid three
one-hundredths of the deposited Dollars for the use of the disks. This
was known as three percent, or bank interest.

"Now, the safety of Dollars, when deposited in banks, was not absolutely
assured to the depositor. At times, the custodians of these Dollars were
wont to appropriate them and proceed to portions of the earth, sparsely
inhabited and accessible with difficulty. And at other times, nomadic
groups known as 'yeggmen' visited the banks, opened the vaults by force,
and departed, carrying with them the contents.

"But to return to our subject. In the year 1921, one of these numerous
John Joneses performed an apparently inconsequential action which caused
the name of John Jones to go down in history. What did he do?

"He proceeded to one of these banks, known at that time as 'The First
National Bank of Chicago,' and deposited there, one of these disks--a
silver Dollar--to the credit of a certain individual. And this
individual to whose credit the Dollar was deposited was no other person
than the fortieth descendant of John Jones who stipulated in paper which
was placed in the files of the bank, that the descendancy was to take
place along the oldest child of each of the generations which would
constitute his posterity.

"The bank accepted the Dollar under that understanding, together with
another condition imposed by this John Jones, namely, that the interest
was to be compounded annually. That meant that at the close of each
year, the bank was to credit the account of John Jones's fortieth
descendant with three one-hundredths of the account as it stood at the
beginning of the year.

"History tells us little more concerning this John Jones--only that he
died in the year 1931, or ten years afterward, leaving several children.

"Now you gentlemen who are taking mathematics under Professor
L127M72421Male, of the University of Mars, will remember that where any
number such as X, in passing through a progressive cycle of change,
grows at the end of that cycle by a proportion p, then the value of the
original X, after n cycles, becomes X(1 + p)^n.

"Obviously, in this case, X equalled one Dollar; p equalled three
one-hundredths; and n will depend upon any nu