THE BREATH OF LIFE 



errands, light our houses, cook our dinners, and 

 pull our loads. 



How humdrum and constant and prosaic the 

 other forces — gravity, cohesion, chemical affinity, 

 and capillary attraction — seem when compared 

 with this force of forces, electricity ! How deep and 

 prolonged it slumbers at one time, how terribly ac- 

 tive and threatening at another, bellowing through 

 the heavens like an infuriated god seeking whom he 

 may destroy! 



The warring of the elements at such times is no 

 figure of speech. What has so disturbed the peace 

 in the electric equilibrium, as to make possible this 

 sudden outburst, this steep incline in the stream of 

 energy, this ethereal Niagara pouring from heaven 

 to earth? Is a thunderstorm a display of the atomic 

 energy of which the physicists speak, and which, 

 were it available for our use, would do all the work 

 of the world many times over? 



How marvelous that the softest summer breeze, 

 or the impalpable currents of the calmest day, can 

 be torn asunder with such suddenness and violence, 

 by the accumulated energy that slumbers in the 

 imaginary atoms, as to give forth a sound like the 

 rending of mountains or the detonations of earth- 

 quakes ! 



Electricity is the soul of matter. If Whitman's 

 paradox is true, that the soul and body are one, in 

 the same sense the scientific paradox is true, that 



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