for mystery. There was a large wooden room, with walls and floor of
unpainted boards, the ceiling hung with brilliantly colored flags, a
telegraphic apparatus, one or two desks, books, writing materials--a
scientific working-room, in short, with its implements in that order
which implied that only men had used them.

There were in 1874 one hundred and eight such signal stations as
this, modest, inexpensive little offices, established over the United
States, from the low sea-coast plains to the topmost peak of the Rocky
Mountains.

If we were accurate chroniclers, we should have to go back to
Aristotle and the Chaldeans to show the origin and purpose of these
little offices, just as Carlyle has to unearth Ulfila the Moesogoth to
explain a word he uses to his butter-man. The world is so new, after
all, and things so inextricably tangled up in it! In this case, as
it is the sun and wind and rain which are the connecting links, it is
easy enough to bring past ages close to us. The Chaldeans, building
their great embankments or raiding upon Job's herds, are no longer a
myth to us when we remember that they were wet by the rain and anxious
about the weather and their crops, just as we are; in fact, they felt
such matters so keenly, and were so little able to cope with these
unknown forces, that they made gods of them, and then, beyond prayers
and sacrifices, troubled themselves no further about the matter.
Even the shrewd, observant Hebrews, living out of doors, a race of
shepherds and herdsmen, never looked for any rational cause for wind
or storm, but regarded them, if not as gods, as the messengers of God,
subject to no rules. It was He who at His will covered the heavens
with clouds, who prepared rain, who cast forth hoar-frost like ashes:
the stormy wind fulfilled His word. Men searched into the construction
of their own minds, busied themselves with subtle philosophies, with
arts and sciences, conquered the principles of Form and Color, and
made not wholly unsuccessful efforts to solve the mystery of the sun
and stars; but it was not until 340 B.C. that any notice was taken of
the every-day matters of wind and heat and rain.

Aristotle, the Gradgrind of philosophers, first noted down the known
facts on this subject in his work _On Meteors_. His theories and
deductions were necessarily erroneous, but he struck the foundation of
all science, the collection of known facts. Theophrastus, one of his
pupils, made a compi