Page:The fairy tales of science.djvu/79

 ocean, whose atoms danced about so joyously that I longed to be among them. At the foot of the rock ran a little stream, which probably conveyed some atoms like myself into new scenes of existence.

"Night came on, and new wonders were revealed. Those marvellous celestial atoms, the stars, looked down upon me with their sparkling eyes; and the silvery light of the moon gave fresh grandeur to the ocean and my rocky island. As I gazed upon the glittering waters I thought of my poor brethren who were deep down in the rock, and sighed!

"Next day the sun was obscured by clouds, and large drops of water fell from the sky. The stream became a river, and dashed through the valley at a headlong pace. The atoms constituting the raindrops buffeted me very severely, and at length their blows detached me, with a few old friends, from the mass of my brother atoms. The friends who clung to me in the hour of adversity were three atoms of oxygen and one atom of calcium. For countless ages we had been united, and now the rain-drops, with all their bluster, could not sever us.

"No sooner were we detached, than a stream of moving atoms impelled us down the sloping sides of the rock and hurled us into the river. There could be no rest for us there. The rapid current carried us through numerous valleys and gorges, and finally launched us into the ocean.