Page:Handbook for Boys.djvu/183

162 flames which would bring back summer in the midst of winter and day in the midst of night were hungry and must be fed, and when they escaped devoured the woods and only the water could stop them.

These and many other things men learned, but no one knew why it all was or how it came to be. Man began to wonder, and that was the beginning of the path which led to the Great Spirit.

In the ages when men began to wonder there was bern a boy whose name was Wo, which meant in the language of his time, "Whence." As he lay in his mother's arms she loved him and wondered: "His body is of my body, but from whence comes the life—the spirit which is like mine and yet not like it?" And his father seeing the wonder in the mother's eyes, said, "Whence came he from?" And there was no one to answer, and so they called him Wo to remind them that they knew not from whence he came.

As Wo grew up, he was stronger and swifter of foot than any of his tribe. He became a mighty hunter. He knew the ways of all the wild things and could read the signs of the seasons. As he grew older they made him a chief and listened while he spoke at the council board, but Wo was not satisfied. His name was a question and questioning filled his mind.

"Whence did he come? Whither was he going? Why did the sun rise and set? Why did life burst into 'leaf and flower with the coming of spring? Why did the child become a man and the man grow old and die?"

The mystery grew upon him as he pondered. In the morning he stood on a mountain top and stretching out his hands cried, "Whence?" At night he cried to the moon "Whither?" He listened to the soughing of the trees and the song of the brook and tried to learn their language. He peered eagerly into the eyes of little children and tried to read the mystery of life. He listened at the still lips of the dead, waiting for them to tell him whither they had gone.

He went out among his fellows silent and absorbed, always looking for the unseen and listening. for the unspoken. He sat so long silent at the council board that the elders questioned him. To their questioning he replied like one awakening from a dream:

"Our fathers since the beginning have trailed the beasts of the woods. There is none so cunning as the fox, but we can trail him to his lair. Though we are weaker than the great bear and buffalo, yet by our wisdom we overcome them. The deer is more swift of foot, but by craft we overtake him. We cannot fly like a bird, but we snare the winged one with a hair. We have made ourselves many cunning inventions by which the beasts, the trees, the wind, the water and the fire become our servants.

"Then we speak great swelling words: 'How great and wise we are! There is none like us in the air, in the wood, or in the waterl"

"But the words are false. Our pride is like that of a partridge drumming on his log in the wood before the fox leaps upon him. Our sight is like that of the mole burrowing under the ground. Our wisdom is like a drop of dew upon the grass. Our ignorance is like the great water which no eye can measure.

"Our life is like a bird coming out of the dark, fluttering for a heart-bent in the tepee and then going forth into the dark again. No one can tell whence it comes or whither it goes. I have asked the wise men and they cannot answer. I have listened to the voice of the trees and wind and water, but I do not know their tongue; I have questioned the sun and the moon and the stars, but they are silent.

"But to-day in the silence before the darkness gives place to light, I seemed to hear a still small voice within my breast, saying to me, Wo, the