What good to argue agin such facts?
Supposin' the world come out o' nothing, with nobody to fetch it, or to say a word of orders, how ever could it 'a managed to get a lump of gold like this in it?
They clever fellers is too clever.

Let 'em put all their heads together, and turn out a nugget, and I'll believe them." Uncle Sam's reasoning was too deep for any but himself to follow.

He was not long in perceiving this, though we were content to admire his words without asking him to explain them; so he only said, "Well, well," and began to try with both hands if he could heft this lump.

He stirred it, and moved it, and raised it a little, as the glisten of the light upon its roundings showed; but lift it fairly from the ground he could not, however he might bow his sturdy legs and bend his mighty back to it; and, strange to say, he was pleased for once to acknowledge his own discomfiture.
"Five hundred and a half I used to lift to the height of my knee-cap easily; I may 'a fallen off now a hundred-weight with years, and strings in my back, and rheumatics; but this here little toad is a clear hundredweight out and beyond my heftage.

If there's a pound here, there's not an ounce under six hundred-weight, I'll lay a thousand dollars.