It is a dear and lovely disposition, and a most valuable one, that can brush away indignities and discourtesies and seek and find the pleasanter features of an experience.
Mark TwainIn the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore, in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Mark Twain