RELEASING STORED ENERGY. 45 



seems to receive a sympathy, which is higher 

 and more intense than that received from hu- 

 mans. One instinct or attribute in particular, 

 which to my mind often seems to exist in dead 

 objects, such as a stump, a stone or the body of 

 some animal, is that therein is a great desire 

 to become once again a part of a living thing, 

 to feel once again the joy of the sap or life blood 

 pulsating and tingling through vein and tis- 

 sue. It is for that reason that I like to start 

 bonfires and burn old logs and brush; that at 

 times I like to crush stones and scatter their 

 dust far and wide over the surface of the sward ; 

 that I like to see scavenger beetles or buzzards 

 feeding upon the dead bodies of birds and 

 snakes. 



When I put a lump of coal into a furnace 

 I often fancy that I am unlocking the prison 

 cells of an energy which was there stored in the 

 old Carboniferous days, when man was un- 

 thought of, when reason was unknown. Out 

 of its mass leaps the heat, warming to the white 

 glow of the flame the tiny remnants of the old 

 cell walls, giving to my body a modicum of its 

 radiant energy, then bounding again free and 

 untrammeled into that space through which it 

 travelled, when millions of years ago it came 

 fresh from its fountain head, the sun. I am 

 the liberator who sets it free. With what joy it 

 surges forth into the light, the smile, of its 



