Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/177

 big seas molest with waves and inundations, stealthily drowning cities overnight, and sucking down tall navies as a child gulps sugarplums; whereas how many plants and gums and seeds bear man's destruction in their tiny hearts! what soulless beasts of the field and of the wood are everywhere enleagued in endless feud against him, with tusks and teeth, with nails and claws and venomous stings, made sharp for man's demolishment! Thus all struggle miserably, like hunted persons under a sentence of death that may at best be avoided for a little while. And manifestly, this is not as it should be."

"Yet I much fear it is so ordered, father."

The old man said testily: "I repeat, for your better comfort, there can be no doubt that Satan alone conspires to hinder the great work. No; it would be abuse of superstition to conceive, as would be possible for folk of slender courage, that the finger of heaven has to-day unloosed this destruction, to my bodily hurt and spiritual admonition." Kennaston could see, though, that the speaker half believed this might be exactly what had happened. "For I am about no vaunt