TIME AND CHANGE 



evil thought it would represent! If the poor victim^ 

 were clarified and made purer by the process, then it 

 would seem worth while. 



At the Volcano House they keep a book in which 

 tourists write down their impressions of the volcano. 

 A distinguished statesman had been there a few days 

 before us, and had written a long account of his 

 impressions, closing with this oratorical sentence: 

 &quot;No pen, however gifted, can describe, no brush, 

 however brilliant, can portray, the wonders we have 

 been permitted to behold.&quot; I could not refrain from 

 writing under it, &quot;I have seen the orthodox hell, 

 and it s the real thing.&quot; 



That huge kettle of molten metal, mantling and 

 bubbling, how it is impressed upon my memory! 

 It is a vestige of the ancient cosmic fire that once 

 wrapped the whole globe in its embrace. It had a 

 kind of brutal fascination. One could not take one s 

 eyes from it. That network of broad, jagged, fiery 

 lines defining those black, smooth masses, or islands, 

 of floating matter told of a side of nature we had 

 never before seen. We lingered there on the brink 

 of the fearful spectacle till night came on, and the 

 sides of the mighty caldron, and the fog-clouds 

 above it, glowed in the infernal light. Not so white 

 as the metal pouring from a blast furnace, not so hot, 

 a more sullen red, but welling up from the central 

 primordial fires of the earth. This great pot has 

 boiled over many times in the recent past, as the 

 154 



