I
The first trips--the initiation, with the master's eye upon you--count
for but little. One is not in direct communication with the wonderful
beast. Its veritable character is hidden, for there is a tiresome
intermediary between, a reticent, cunning interpreter--the responsible
tamer. With your foot on the brake, even when you hold the levers and
handles between your fingers, you are far from possessing the monster.
By your side sits the master, whose sovereignty it has too long
acknowledged; to him it is as obsequious, as submissively attached, as a
faithful dog. For the thing is half human. You feel somewhat like a
lion-tamer's apprentice when he enters the cage with his father, and
sees the cowed brutes prostrate themselves humbly before the commanding
eye and the lash. One has a great desire to be alone, in Space, with
this unknown animal, that dates but from yesterday; we burn to discover
what it is in itself, what it demands and withholds, what obedience it
will vouchsafe to its unexpected master; as also what new lessons the
new horizons will teach us, the new horizons into which we shall be
plunged to our very soul by a force that, issuing now, and for the first
time, from the inexhaustible reservoir of undisciplined forces, permits
us to absorb, in one day, as many sights, as much landscape and sky, as
would formerly have been granted to us in a whole life-time.