So the man made a trough a great many miles long, the two sides coming
together like a great letter V. Then the sun brought water from the
sea and kept the trough nearly full year after year. The man put into
it the lumber and logs from the great forests, and gravitation pulled
the lumber and water ever so swiftly, night and day, miles away to the
sea.

How I have laughed as I have seen that perpetual stream of lumber and
timber pour out so far from where the sun grew them for man. For the
sun never ceased to supply the water, and gravitation never ceased to
pull.

This man who relentlessly cut down the great forests never said, "How
good the sun is!" nor, "How strong is gravitation!" but said
continually, "How smart I am!"




OLD SUN HELP

Holland is a land that is said to draw twenty feet of water. Its
surface is below sea level. Since 1440 they have been recovering land
from the sea. They have acquired 230,000 acres in all. Fifty years
ago they diked off 45,000 acres of an arm of the sea, called Haarlem
Meer, that had an average depth of twelve and three quarters feet of
water, and proposed to pump it out so as to have that much more fertile
land. They wanted to raise 35,000,000 tons of water a month a distance
of ten feet, to get through in time. Who could work the handle?