‘What is it?’ I asked in some alarm.
‘Just the strongest moth you ever saw in your life—pulls like a little cart-horse. I was lighting-up for a bit of quiet thinking, and in he buzzed.’
‘Let him go again.’
‘Oh, he can go: I shan’t want him yet,’ and he flung the insect off. ‘Are there many of his sort here, I wonder? We must ask old Forelock,’ so he called our host.
‘What if there are?’
‘See here,’ he said, propping himself up with his pillow, and, to my dismay, preparing for a long talk. ‘See here: I’ll tell you something; that insect is undeveloped Power.’
‘Well, what of that?’
‘Can’t you see?’ he asked in a tone expressive of his certainty that I could not.
I gave him the desired negative, and he went on.
‘That insect means half the motive power in Nature clean thrown away.’