trenchand blade, is swallowing with giant gulps the writhing
victim. Blow shrill and loud your bugle blasts! Beat with
fierce clangor your brazen cymbals! Push up wild shrieks and
groans, and horrid cries,

"That all the woods may answer, and your echoes ring,"

and the foul fiend perchance be scared away by deafening din.

O, sad for those who lived before the ghouls were disinherited;
for whom the woods and waters, and the deep places, were
peopled with mighty, mysterious foes; who saw evil spirits in
the earth forces, and turned her gold into consuming fire. For
us, later born, Science has dived into the caverns, and scaled
the heights, and fathomed the depths, forcing from coy yet
willing Nature the solution of her own problems, and showing
us everywhere, GOD. We are not children of fate, trembling at
the frown of fairies and witches and gnomes, but the children
of our Father. If we ascend up into heaven, he is there. If
we take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the sea, even there shall his hand lead, and his right
hand hold.

Is it begun? Not--well, I don't know, though. Something seems
to be happening up in the northwest corner. Certainly, a bit
of that round disk has been shaved off. I will wait five
minutes. Yes, the battle is begun. The shadow advances. The
moon yields. But there are watchers in the heaven as well as
in the earth. There is sympathy in the skies. Up floats an
argosy of compassionate clouds, and fling their fleecy veil