at pricked
and drove me on,--not back, for that was impossible. Little by little I
had learned to understand, each step printed upon my brain as with
red-hot irons: not back, but on, and on--to greater anguish, yes; but on,
to fuller despair, to experiences more terrible,--but on, and on, and on.
I arose again, for this was my fate. I could not pause even for all the
teachings of despair.

The waste stretched far as eyes could see. It was wild and terrible, with
neither vegetation nor sign of life. Here and there were heaps of ruin,
which had been villages and cities; but nothing was in them save reptiles
and crawling poisonous life and traps for the unwary wanderer. How often
I stumbled and fell among these ashes and dust-heaps of the past! Through
what dread moments I lay, with cold and slimy things leaving their trace
upon my flesh! The horrors which seized me, so that I beat my head
against a stone,--why should I tell? These were nought; they touched not
the soul. They were but accidents of the way.

At length, when body and soul were low and worn out with misery and
weariness, I came to another place, where all was so different from the
last that the sight gave me a momentary solace. It was full of furnaces
and clanking machinery and endless work. The whole air round was aglow
with the fury of the fires; and men went and came like demons in the
flames, with red-hot melting metal, pouring it into moulds and beating
it on anvils. In the huge workshops in the background there was a
perpetual whir of machinery, of wheels turning and turning, and pistons
beating, and all the din of labor, which for a time renewed the anguish
of my brain, yet also soothed it,--for there was meaning in the beatings
and the whirlings. And a hope rose within me that with all the forces
that were here, some revolution might be possible,--something that would
change the features of this place and overturn the worlds. I went from
workshop to workshop, and examined all that was being done, and
understood,--for I had known a little upon the earth, and my old
knowledge came back, and to learn so much more filled me with new life.
The master of all was one who never rested, nor seemed to feel
weariness nor pain nor pleasure. He had everything in his hand. All who
were there were his workmen or his assistants or his servants. No one
shared with him in his councils. He was more than a prince among them;
he was as a god. And the things he planned an