my thunder-cloud in this little glass: there’s the lightning for you. It
only shines faintly as yet, but it is easily made stronger. I can put a
thousand thunder-clouds together and you shall see how bright the light
becomes. I can put two thousand together and you shall see how strong the
electric power is: stronger than the wind, stronger than the steam; there
is not a weight it cannot raise, not a wheel it cannot turn. Look, look,
I have caught the lightning and imprisoned it in this little glass! I am
lord of the mighty electric spirit: he will have to serve me like the ox
and the horse, like the wind and Steam!”
He ran and flung open the door. The night was past and it was morning. He
shouted till his voice rang over the valley. The people heard and woke and
sprang from their beds:
“Father Two-Legs is calling,” they said to one another. “Let us go to his
house and hear what he has to tell us.”
They hurried from every side; and Two-Legs stood up, with his great white
beard, and told them the marvellous thing that had happened:
“I have caught the electric spirit ... the mysterious, mighty spirit,” he
said. “I can produce as strong a current of his immense force as I please
and I can carry it whither I please, even to the end of the earth, along
a thin wire. I can kindle the lightning, so that it shines calmly and
gently, and put it out and kindle it again as easily as I snap my fingers.”
They listened open-mouthed and stared, while he showed them and explained
it to them:
[Illustration: TWO-LEGS STOOD UP]
“The electric spirit is my captive,” he said. “I have imprisoned him in
this little glass and compelled him to obey me. I give him to you; and in
him you have a servant whose like you have never known. He will alter the
face of the whole earth. If those who died a hundred years ago were to
rise again ten years hence, they would not know the world in which they
had lived.”
The fools laughed and mocked at him, as was their wont. But the clever
ones asked Two-Legs to explain it again and again and never tired of
listening to him. At last, they all went home and began to enquire further
into the matter, while Two-Legs went into his house and shut his door and
wondered what would come next.
10
Out in the world it happened as he had said.
The electric spirit served mankind as none other had ever done. Electric
light glowed in every house. Electric cars ran in every direction at
lightning speed. The electric telegraph carried men’s messages from one
end of the world to the other.
Soon there was nothing left that Electricity could not do more easily and
better.
[Illustration]
TWO-LEGS’ FUTURE
[Illustration]
1
Two-Legs still lives.
He will not die as long as the world exists.
He lives now in one country and now in another. No one knows for certain
where he is; and there are not many who think of him in the ordinary
course of things. Only very few have seen him, but those who have will
never forget him either, so old is he and venerable, so clever and radiant
his eyes.
He is the same that he always was.
In the beginning, he supplied himself with food and clothes, shelter
against the weather and defence against his foes. He built himself huts
and houses, killed some of the wild animals and tamed others. He taught
his children to sow and reap. Misfortune overtook him and he conquered it.
His descendants multiplied and filled the earth.
Since then he conquered the wind and Steam and Electricity. He bound them
and gave them to man for his servants. And man trained them, even as he
had trained the horse and the ox and the dog.
The steam-engine gives bread to many times more people than all the beasts
of the field. The electric spirit does a thousand times more tricks in
man’s service than the horse or the dog.
[Illustration]
In the evening, when Two-Legs sits outside his house, the voices speak to
him as before:
“Two-Legs ... the vanquisher of the animals ... the lord of the ox and the
horse and the dog ... the strongest of all creatures.”
“Two-Legs ... who conquered the wind and took him into his service.... He
made him turn the mill ... made him carry the ship over the sea.”
“Two-Legs ... the lord of Steam.... He forced him into his engine and
told him to do the tasks which men put him to.”
“Two-Legs, the wisest, the strongest.... He explored the lightning and
bound it.... He compelled it to draw the greatest weights and to shine
calmly and gently in men’s small rooms and to carry their messages from
one end of the world to the other.”
Two-Legs listened to the voices, but only for a moment. He was examining a
piece of metal which he held in his hand and into which he had been long
and secretly enquiring:
“Look,” he said to the young man who was now his pupil. “I wish I knew
what the queer rays are that come out of this substance. It shall be
called Radium; that means the thing that beams. I will search until I know
its nature. Who knows what secret forces it conceals and what benefits it
can perform for mankind?”
2
Two-Legs explored the new force.
The world round about him went its course. Each year brought new
incidents, new discoveries, new wealth and new happiness. Two-Legs paid
no heed. He sat with his radium and would not let it go until he knew it
through and through.
There were clever people who knew he must succeed some time and who waited
eagerly and gladly for him to make mankind the master of a new power,
mightier, perhaps, than any of those which he had yet conquered.
There were fools who said that it was all very well with Steam and
Electricity and the rest. They could understand that. But this new thing
here was quite senseless and absurd. Besides, one must not tempt God.
There were mysteries in nature which mankind should never seek to explore.
There was a limit to what was allowed to men; and the man who overstepped
that limit was either a fool or a presumptuous person who ought to be
locked up or punished.
Two-Legs listened just as little to them now as he had done in the old
days.
Their folly was the same now as then. What they saw before their eyes and
felt with their hands they believed in. The new thing which was in its
first stages, they mocked at and condemned.
But, sometimes, a man would come to Two-Legs with his little son, so that
the boy might see the wisest man in the world. Then, if he had the luck to
find words that could divert Two-Legs’ attention from his work, Two-Legs
would look up and fix his steady glance on the boy, lay his hand on the
boy’s head and say:
“Do not grow up to be a fool, my lad. The fool is he who judges what he
does not understand.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_Bristol: Burleigh Ltd., at the Burleigh Press._