He patted the dog, who lay at his feet:
“You were once a wild and fierce animal and now you are gentle and serve me faithfully,” he said.
He listened to the wind, who was whispering in the trees:
“You can cool my forehead on a hot day and you can rush over the earth like a wild monster,” he said. “I know you and I use you.”
He looked across the meadow, where the mist was rising and the fine white steam floated to and fro:
“You, too,” he said and nodded. “You are as light as a veil and dainty and white and innocent. The poets sing of you and you make little children cough. But you are the same that burst the mountain and destroyed my land. I watched you and discovered you and caught you and put you in my engine; and now you must toil for my descendants the wide world over.”
The thunder rolled in the distance. There came long and deep peals. Now and again, a flash of lightning gleamed and lit up the darkness. And the voices spoke again:
“It is thunder, Two-Legs ... it is lightning.... You do not know what that is. No one knows what it is.”
“The world is full of mighty, secret forces ... mightier than the wind ... harder to understand than steam.”
“The ox and the horse tremble before the thunder and the lightning. Two-Legs and all his descendants tremble wherever the thunder-storm reaches. There is more between heaven and earth than Two-Legs knows of.”