And just now he was saying that he should like to boss the universe!  All this has nothing very wonderful about it.  Every one of us is subject to alternations of overvaluation and undervaluation of ourselves.  Do you not remember soliloquies something like this?  “Was there ever such a senseless, stupid creature as I am?  How have I managed to keep so long out of the idiot asylum?  Undertook to write a poem, and stuck fast at the first verse.  Had a call from a friend who had just been round the world.  Did n’t ask him one word about what he had seen or heard, but gave him full details of my private history, I having never been off my own hearth-rug for more than an hour or two at a time, while he was circumnavigating and circumrailroading the globe.  Yes, if anybody can claim the title, I am certainly the prize idiot.”  I am afraid that we all say such things as this to ourselves at times.  Do we not use more emphatic words than these in our self-depreciation?  I cannot say how it is with others, but my vocabulary of self-reproach and humiliation is so rich in energetic expressions that I should be sorry to have an interviewer present at an outburst of one of its raging geysers, its savage soliloquies.  A man is a kind of inverted thermometer, the bulb uppermost, and the column of self-valuation is all the time going up and down.  Number Seven is very much like other people in this respect,—­very much like you and me.

This train of reflections must not carry me away from Number Seven.

“If I can’t get a chance to boss this planet for a week or so,” he began again, “I think I could write its history,—­yes, the history of the world, in less compass than any one who has tried it so far.”

“You know Sir Walter Raleigh’s ‘History of the World,’ of course?” said the Professor.

“More or less,—­more or less,” said Number Seven prudently.  “But I don’t care who has written it before me.  I will agree to write the story of two worlds, this and the next, in such a compact way that you can commit them both to memory in less time than you can learn the answer to the first question in the Catechism.”

What he had got into his head we could not guess, but there was no little curiosity to discover the particular bee which was buzzing in his bonnet.  He evidently enjoyed our curiosity, and meant to keep us waiting awhile before revealing the great secret.

“How many words do you think I shall want?”

It is a formula, I suppose, I said, and I will grant you a hundred words.

“Twenty,” said the Professor.  “That was more than the wise men of Greece wanted for their grand utterances.”

The two Annexes whispered together, and the American Annex gave their joint result.  One thousand was the number they had fixed on.  They were used to hearing lectures, and could hardly conceive that any subject could be treated without taking up a good part of an hour.

“Less than ten,” said Number Five.  “If there are to be more than ten, I don’t believe that Number Seven would think the surprise would be up to our expectations.”