Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE
the works of a lady's watch or destroy a world. You
saw me light that unholy cigar with my finger?"
I remembered it.
"Try to imagine how minute was the fraction of
energy released to do that small thing! You are
aware that everything is made up of restless and
revolving molecules?-everything —furniture, rocks,
water, iron, horses, men-everything that exists."
"Yes."
"Molecules of scores of different sizes and weights,
but none of them big enough to be seen by help of
any microscope?"
"Yes."
"And that each molecule is made up of thousands
of separate and never-resting little particles called
atoms?"
"Yes."
"And that up to recent times the smallest atom
known to science was the hydrogen atom, which was
a thousand times smaller than the atom that went
to the building of any other molecule?"
"Yes."
"Well, the radium atom from the positive pole
is 5,000 times smaller than that atom! This unspeakably minute atom is called an electron. Now then,
out of my long affection for you and for your lineage,
I will reveal to you a secret-a secret known to no
scientist as yet-the secret of the firefly's light and
the glowworm's; it is produced by a single electron
imprisoned in a polonium atom."
"Sire, it is a wonderful thing, and the scientific
world would be grateful to know this secret, which
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