File:Children's stories of American progress (1886) (14760389466).jpg

Identifier: childrensstories02wrig (find matches)
Title: Children's stories of American progress
Year: 1886 (1880s)
Authors: Wright, Henrietta Christian. (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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that tired humanity might go to rest quite surethat the world would be well taken care of whileit slept. In those days all the earth seemed full ofunseen spirits, and every thing in nature had avoice to speak its mission to the world. Thetrees and flowers, the brooks and fountains, thewinds and the buds, were all gifted with strangepowers, and could work good or ill as they sodesired, and man was very thankful for theirgood offices, and very careful not to offendthem lest they should use their power for harm. But as the world grew older the belief in allthese supernatural beings gradually died out,and only a few old people or children could befound who kept their faith in the merry littlefolk of old. Perhaps there would still linger among thesimple inhabitants of a secluded village a littlesuperstition about lucky and unlucky days,witches charms, fairy rings, and elfin lights inthe meadows ; but for the rest of mankind all thebelief in such things had changed to only achildish memory.
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THE TELEGRAPH. THE STORY OF THE TELEGRAPH. 211 And yet, when the world thought itselfwisest, when all the secrets of nature seemedspread out before man like an open book, whenhe had learned all about the laws of the windsand tides, and the courses of the stars, and themeanings that lay beneath the tint of every leafand flower, and when the interior of the earth,which he had once supposed peopled withdemons and spirits of darkness, was laid barebefore his eyes, and its rich treasures yieldedthemselves up to his hands, even then hisknowledge was really so limited that he wasignorant of the one mystery that is in all naturethe oreatest. For although his belief in the spirits of theair had long since vanished, there were yetmysterious and unseen forces filling the earthand heavens, and gifted with powers so strangeand wonderful that the wildest dreams of mancould never have imagined them. The heart of the oak and the leaf of therose, the mighty boulder of granite and thesmallest diamond,

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