_Illustrated London News_: and it has puzzled you and made you
sad. You want to know why God killed all those people--mothers among
them, too, and little children?

Alas, my dear child! who am I that I should answer you that?

Have you done wrong in asking me? No, my dear child; no. You have asked
me because you are a human being and a child of God, and not merely a
cleverer sort of animal, an ape who can read and write and cast accounts.
Therefore it is that you cannot be content, and ought not to be content,
with asking how things happen, but must go on to ask why. You cannot be
content with knowing the causes of things; and if you knew all the
natural science that ever was or ever will be known to men, that would
not satisfy you; for it would only tell you the _causes_ of things, while
your souls want to know the _reasons_ of things besides; and though I may
not be able to tell you the reasons of things, or show you aught but a
tiny glimpse here and there of that which I called the other day the
glory of Lady Why, yet I believe that somehow, somewhen, somewhere, you
will learn something of the reason of things. For that thirst to know
_why_ was put into the hearts of little children by God Himself; and I
believe that God would never have given them that thirst if He had not
meant to satisfy it.

There--you do not understand me. I trust that you will understand me
some day. Meanwhile, I think--I only say I _think_--you know I told you
how humble we must be whenever we speak of Lady Why--that we may guess at
something like a good reason for the terrible earthquakes in South
America. I do not wish to be hard upon poor people in great affliction:
but I cannot help thinking that they have been doing for hundreds of
years past something very like what the Bible calls "tempting
God"--staking their property and their lives upon the chances of no
earthquakes coming, while they ought to have known that an earthquake
might come any day. They have fulfilled (and little thought I that it
would be fulfilled so soon) the parable that I told you once, of the
nation of the Do-as-you-likes, who lived careless and happy at the foot
of the burning mountain, and would not be warned by the smoke that came
out of the top, or by the slag and cinders which lay all about them; till
the mountain blew up, and destroyed them miserably.

Then I think that they ought to have expected an earthquake.

Well--it is not for us to judge an