There was once a man who had thousands of acres of mighty forests in
the distant mountains. They were valueless there, but would be
exceedingly valuable in the great cities hundreds of miles away, if he
could only find any power to transport them thither. So he looked for
a team that could haul whole counties of forests so many miles. He saw
that the sun drew the greatest loads, and he asked it to help him. And
the sun said that was what he was made for; he existed only to help
man. He said that he had made those great forests to grow for a
thousand years so as to be ready for man when he needed them, and that
he was now ready to help move them where they were wanted.
So he told the man who owned the forest that there was a great power,
which men called gravitation, that seemed to reside in the center of
the earth and every other world, but that it worked everywhere. It
held the stones down to the earth, made the rain fall, and water to run
down hill; and if the man would arrange a road, so that gravitation and
the sun could work together, the forest would soon be transported from
the mountains to the sea.
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!"