the storm, that stopped not for
billow or blast, gave the lie to philosophy, and scattered the theory
of the wise like chaff.

"The lightning, that fierce spirit of the storm, that darted down on
its mission of destruction from the black cloud floating in the sky,
became a thing of interest to the mechanical world, and the question
was asked, 'Why cannot the lightning be harnessed into the service of
man, and be made utilitarian?' Philosophy sneered at the wild
delusion, but see how that same subtle and mysterious agency has been
conquered? Note how truthfully it carries every word intrusted to its
charge, along thousands of miles of the telegraph wire, with a speed,
in comparison with which, sound is a laggard, a speed that annihilates
alike space and time. Men looked into a mirror, and seeing their own
counterpart, a _fac-simile_ of themselves reflected there, began to
ask, 'Why may not that shadow be fixed; fastened in some way, to
remain upon the polished surface that gives it back, even after the
original may be mouldering in the grave?' Here again philosophy laid
its finger upon its nose, and winked facetiously, as if it had found a
new subject for ridicule, in the stupendous folly of such an inquiry.
But from that simple question, rose up the Daguerreian art; an art
which fixes upon metallic plates, upon paper, the shadow of a man, of
palace and cottage, of mountain and field, giving thus a picture ten
thousand times truer to nature than the pencil of the cunningest
artist. These and a thousand other mighty triumphs of human ingenuity
have fought their way onward to their present position, against the
fogyism of philosophy, the inertia of the schoolmen. They have been
the sequence of cold, resistless demonstrations of experiment and
fact. The world would stand still but for the spirit of research for
the practical; for experimental, and not theoretical knowledge, that
is abroad. It is this spirit that moves the world in all its present
matchless career of progress, and distinguishes our era above all
others of the world's existence. You may be thankful, my friend, that
you have been able to add another fixed fact to the stock of human
knowledge, even though it be only that the 'peeper' is a frog, and not
a 'newt' or a 'myth.'

"But who would suppose that such a tiny little frogling could make
such a loud, shrill, and ear-piercing sound? Who would think that a
million of such puny things, could make the air of a