The War with Nature. 89 



of her ; anon the frantic vixen that buries her 

 malignant teeth into the hand that strikes or 

 caresses her. All these rapid incomprehensible 

 changes, even when most vexing and destructive to 

 your plans, interest your mind, and call up a hun- 

 dred latent energies it is a joy to discover. But 

 you have not yet sounded all her depths ; nor can 

 you imagine, seeing her frequent gay smiles, to 

 what length her fierce resentment may carry her. 

 Sometimes, as if roused to sudden frenzy at the 

 indignities you are subjecting her to hacking at her 

 trees, turning up her cushioned soil, and trampling 

 down her grass and flowers she arrays herself in 

 her blackest, most terrible aspect, and like a beauti- 

 ful woman who in her fury has no regard for her 

 beauty, she plucks up her noblest trees by the roots, 

 and scooping up the very soil from the earth 

 whirls it aloft to give a more horrible gloom to the 

 heavens. And darkness not being terrifying enough, 

 she kindles up the mighty chaos she has created 

 into a blaze of intolerable light, while the solid 

 world is shaken to its foundations with her wrathful 

 thunders. When destruction seems about to fall 

 on man and all his works, when you are prostrate 

 and ready to perish with excessive fear, lo, the mood 

 changes, the furious passion has spent itself, and 

 there is no trace left of it when you look up only to 

 encounter her peaceful reassuring smile. These 

 sublime moods are, however, infrequent and soon 

 forgotten ; man learns to despise the threats of a 

 cataclysm that never comes, and goes forth once 



