THE STILL SMALL VOICE 
forms makes no sound. Think of the still small 
voice of radio-activity — so still and small that only 
molecular science is aware of it, yet physicists be- 
lieve it to be the mainspring of the universe. 
The vast ice-engine that we call a glacier is almost 
as silent as the slumbering rocks, and, to all but the 
eye of science, nearly as immobile, save where it 
discharges into the sea. It is noisy in its dying, but 
in the height of its power it is as still as the falling 
snow of which it is made. Yet give it time enough, 
and it scoops out the valleys and grinds down the 
mountains and turns the courses of rivers, or makes 
new ones. 
We split the rocks and level the hills with our 
powder and dynamite and fill the world with noise; 
but behold the vast cleavage of the rocks which the 
slow, noiseless forces of sun and frost bring about! 
In the Shawangunk Mountains one may see enor- 
mous masses of conglomerate that have been split 
down from the main range, showing as clean a 
cleavage over vast surfaces as the quarryman can 
produce on small blocks with his drills and wedges, 
One has to pause and speculate on the character 
of the forces that achieved such results and left no 
mark of sudden violence behind. The forces that 
cleft them asunder were the noiseless sunbeams. 
The unequal stress and strain imparted by varying 
temperatures clove the mountains from top to bot- 
tom as with a stroke of the earthquake’s hammer. 
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