When I climbed upon a chair, I could seat myself on the broad sill of
the dormer window. This was the watch-tower whence I viewed the world.
Thence I could see trees in the distance--too far off for me to tell
whether they were churning wind or not. On that side those trees alone
were between me and the sky.

One day when my aunt took me with her into the lumber-room, I found
there, in a corner, a piece of strange mechanism. It had a kind of
pendulum; but I cannot describe it because I had lost sight of it long
before I was capable of discovering its use, and my recollection of it
is therefore very vague--far too vague to admit of even a conjecture
now as to what it could have been intended for. But I remember well
enough my fancy concerning it, though when or how that fancy awoke I
cannot tell either. It seems to me as old as the finding of the
instrument. The fancy was that if I could keep that pendulum wagging
long enough, it would set all those trees going too; and if I still
kept it swinging, we should have such a storm of wind as no living man
had ever felt or heard of. That I more than half believed it, will be
evident from the fact that, although I frequently carried the pendulum,
as I shall call it, to the window sill, and set it in motion by way of
experiment, I had not, up to the time of a certain incident which I
shall very soon have to relate, had the courage to keep up the
oscillation beyond ten or a dozen strokes; partly from fear of the
trees, partly from a dim dread of exercising power whose source and
extent were not within my knowledge. I kept the pendulum in the closet
I have mentioned, and never spoke to any one of it.