A WONDERFUL WORLD 



the brooks, slowly, invisibly building and shaping our 

 bodies — how could we ever dream that it held in 

 leash such a terrible, ubiquitous, spectacular thing 

 as this of the forked lightning? If we were to see 

 and hear it for the first time, should we not think 

 that the Judgment Day had really come? that 

 the great seals of the Book of Fate were being 

 broken? 



What an awakening it is! what a revelation! 

 what a fearfully dramatic actor suddenly leaps 

 upon the stage! Had we been permitted to look be- 

 hind the scenes, we could not have found him; he 

 was not there, except potentially; he was born 

 and equipped in a twinkling. One stride, and one 

 word which shakes the house, and he is gone; 

 gone as quickly as he came. Look behind the cur- 

 tain and he is not there. He has vanished more 

 completely than any stage ghost ever vanished — 

 he has withdrawn into the innermost recesses of the 

 atomic structure of matter, and is diffused through 

 the clouds, to be called back again, as the elemental 

 drama proceeds, as suddenly as before. 



All matter is charged with electricity, either ac- 

 tual or potential; the sun is hot with it, and doubt- 

 less our own heart-beats, our own thinking brains, 

 are intimately related to it; yet it is palpable and 

 visible only in this sudden and extraordinary way. 

 It defies our analysis, it defies our definitions; it is 

 inscrutable and incomprehensible, yet it will do our 



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