THE WAR WITH NATURE 87 



due the wild thing at last, but not yet ; many years 

 will she struggle to retain her ancient sweet su- 

 premacy ; he cannot alter all at once the old order 

 to which she clings tenaciously, as the red man 

 to his savage life. Her attempt to frighten him 

 away has failed. He laughs at her mask of ter- 

 rors he knows that it is only a mask; and it 

 suffocates her and cannot be long endured. She 

 will cast it aside and fight him another way. She 

 will stoop to his yoke and be docile only to betray 

 and defeat him at the last. A thousand strange 

 tricks and surprises will she invent to molest him. 

 In a hundred forms she will buzz in his ears and 

 prick his flesh with stings ; she will sicken him with 

 the perfume of flowers, and poison him with sweet 

 honey; and when he lies down to rest, she will 

 startle him with the sudden apparition of a pair 

 of lidless eyes and a flickering forked tongue. He 

 scatters the seed, and when he looks for the green 

 heads to appear, the earth opens, and lo, an army 

 of long-faced, yellow grasshoppers come forth! 

 She, too, walking invisible at his side had scat- 

 tered her miraculous seed along with his. He 

 will not be beaten by her, he slays her striped and 

 spotted creatures; he dries up her marshes; he 

 consumes her forests and prairies with fire, and 

 her wild things perish in myriads; he covers her 

 plains with herds of cattle, and waving fields of 

 corn, and orchards of fruit-bearing trees. She 

 hides her bitter wrath in her heart, secretly she 

 goes out at dawn of day and blows her trumpet 



