Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/264

254 and coming out the back side of the house in a furrow, splitting some plsnks there. The main body of the tree was completely stripped of bark, which was cast in every direction, two hundred feet, and large pieces of the inside of the tree were hurled, with tremendous force, in various directions,—one into the side of a shed, smashing it, another burying itself in a wood pile. The heart of the tree lay by itself. Probably a piece as large as a man s leg could not have been sawed out of the trunk, which would not have had a crack in it, and much of it was very finely splintered. The windows in the house were broken and the inhabitants knocked down by the concussion. All this was accomplished in an instant by a kind of fire out of the heavens called lightning or a thunderbolt, accompanied by a crashing sound. For what purpose? The ancients called it Jove's bolt, with which he punished the guilty, and we moderns understand it no better. There was displayed a Titanic force, some of that force which made and can unmake the world. The brute forces are not yet wholly tamed. Is this of the character of a wild beast? or is it guided by intelligence and mercy? If we trust our natural impressions, it is a manifestation of brutish force, or vengeance more or less tempered with justice. Yet it is our consciousness