THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 23 



ing, and to the unthinking and superstitious are 

 usually sinister, cruel, personal, leading to much 

 dark talk of banshees and of the mysteries of Prov- 

 idence — as if there were still necessity to justify 

 the ways of God to man ! We are clutched by these 

 terrors even as the j unco was clutched in my gob- 

 lin hand. When the mighty fingers open, we zig- 

 zag, dazed from the danger; but fall to planning, 

 before the tremors of the earth have ceased, how 

 we can build a greater and finer city on the ruins 

 of the old. Upon the crumbled heap of the sec- 

 ond Messina the third will rise, and upon that the 

 fourth, unless the quaking site is forever swal- 

 lowed by the sea. Terror can kill the living, but 

 it cannot hinder them from forgetting, or prevent 

 them from hoping, or, for more than an instant, 

 stop them from doing. Such is the law of being 

 — the law of the Jungle, of Heaven, of my pas- 

 tures, of myself, and of the little j unco. The light 

 of the sun may burn out, motion may cease, mat- 

 ter vanish away, and life come to an end ; but so 

 long as life continues it must continue to assert 

 itself, to obey the law of being — to multiply and 

 replenish the earth, and rejoice. 



Life, like Law and Matter, is all of one piece. 



