CHAPTER VII--THE CHALK-CARTS.
What do you want to know about next?
More about the caves in which the old savages lived,--how they were made, and how the curious things inside them got there, and so forth.
Well, we will talk about that in good time: but now--What is that coming down the hill?
Oh, only some chalk-carts.
Only some chalk-carts?
It seems to me that these chalk-carts are the very things we want; that if we follow them far enough--I do not mean with our feet along the public road, but with our thoughts along a road which, I am sorry to say, the public do not yet know much about--we shall come to a cave, and understand how a cave is made.

Meanwhile, do not be in a hurry to say, "Only a chalk-cart," or only a mouse, or only a dead leaf.

Chalk-carts, like mice, and dead leaves, and most other matters in the universe are very curious and odd things in the eyes of wise and reasonable people.

Whenever I hear young men saying "only" this and "only" that, I begin to suspect them of belonging, not to the noble army of sages--much less to the most noble army of martyrs,--but to the ignoble army of noodles, who think nothing interesting or important but dinners, and balls, and races, and back-biting their neighbours; and I should be sorry to see you enlisting in that regiment when you grow up.
But think--are not chalk-carts very odd and curious things?
I think they are.

To my mind, it is a curious question how men ever thought of inventing wheels; and, again, when they first thought of it.