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 itis 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 
