4　The Endless Parade

Did you ever see a parade—a very long one?I once saw a parade of soldiers that took all day to pass by. Tramp, tramp—tramp, tramp—tramp, tramp, hour after hour, all day long.I never had seen so many men in my whole life.There must have been a hundred thousand of them.It didn't seem possible that there were so many people in the World.But if all the people there are in the World should pass by in one long parade, it would take not one day but a lifetime for them to pass by, for there are over two billion people in the world.

A hundred new people—babies—are born every minute of the day and of the night；many are born while you are reading this, and with every tick of the clock some one has died. But more people are born than die each day, so that the World is getting fuller and fuller of people all the time.

The people on the World are all about the same size and shape. Only in fairy-tales are people as small as your thumb or as tall as a church-steeple.None have wings instead of arms or wheels instead of legs.They all have one head, one nose, one mouth；they all have two ears, two eyes, two arms, and two legs.And yet in all these two billion people there are no two alike, there is not a single person exactly like any other one.Even twins are not