VI 



THE STILL SMALL VOICE 



ONE summer day, while I was walking along the 

 country road on the farm where I was born, a 

 section of the stone wall opposite me, and not more 

 than three or four yards distant, suddenly fell down. 

 Amid the general stiUness and immobility about me, 

 the effect was quite startling. The question at once 

 arose in my mind as to just what happened to that 

 bit of stone wall at that particular moment to cause 

 it to fall. Maybe the slight vibration imparted to 

 the ground by my tread caused the minute shifting 

 of forces that brought it down. But the time was 

 ripe; a long, slow, silent process of decay and disin- 

 tegration, or a shifting of the points of bearing amid 

 the fragments of stone by the action of the weather, 

 culminated at that instant, and the wall fell. It was 

 the sudden summiag-up of half a century or more 

 of atomic changes in the material of the wall. A 

 grain or two of sand yielded to the pressure of long 

 years, and gravity did the rest. It was as when the 

 keystone of an arch crumbles or weakens to the last 

 particle, and the arch suddenly coUapses. 



The same thing happened in the case of the large 

 spruce-tree that fell as our steamer passed near the 

 105 



