 11. A peep into one of God's storehouses. 12. Once there was a father who thought he would build for his children a beautiful home, putting into it everything they could need or desire throughout their lives. 13. So he built the beautiful house, and anyone just to look at the outside of it would exclaim how lovely. 14. For its roof was a wide, blue dome like the sky, and the lofty rooms had arched ceilings covered with tracery of leaves and waving bows. 15. The floors were carpeted with velvet, and the whole was lighted with lamps that shone like stars from above. 16. The sweetest perfumes floated through the air, while thousands of birds answered the music of fountains with their songs. 17. And yet, when you have seen all this, you have not seen the best part of it. 18. For the house has been so wonderfully contrived that it is full of mysterious closets, storehouses, and secret drawers all locked by magic keys or fastened by concealed springs. 19. And each one is filled with something precious or useful or beautiful to look at, piles upon piles and heaps upon heaps of wonderful stores. 20. Everything that the children could want or dream of wanting is laid up here, but yet they are not to be told anything about it. 21. They are put into this delightful home and left to find it all out for themselves. 22. At first, you know they will only play. They will roll on the soft carpet and listen to the fountains and the birds, and wander from room to room to see new beauties everywhere. 23. But someday, a boy full of curiosity, prying here and there into nooks and corners, will touch one of the hidden springs. A door will fly open, and one storehouse of treasures will be revealed. 24. How he will shout and call upon his brothers and sisters to admire with him. How they will pull out the treasures and try to learn how to use his new and strange materials. 25. What does my father mean this for? Why did he give that so odd a shape or so strange a covering? 26. And so through many questions and many experiments, they learn at last how to use the contents of this one storehouse. 27. But do you imagine that sensible children after one such discovery would rest satisfied? 28. Of course they would explore and explore, try every panel and press every spring until one by one all the closets should be opened and all the treasures brought out. 29. And then how could they show their gratitude to the dear father who had taken such pains to prepare this wonderful house for them. 30. The least they could do would be to try to use everything for the purposes intended and not to destroy or injure any of the precious gifts prepared so lovingly for their use. 31. Now God, our loving Father, has made for us, for you, and for me, and for little Maj and Jenny, and for all the grown people and children too, just such a house. 32. It is this earth on which we live. You can see the blue roof and the art ceilings of the rooms with their canopy of leaves and drooping bows and the velvet covered floors and the lights and the birds and fountains. 33. But do you know of any of the secret closets? Have you found the key or the spring of a single one or been called by your mother or father or brother or sister to take a peep into one of them? 34. If you have not, perhaps you would like to go with me to examine one that was opened a good many years ago, but contains such valuable things that the uses of all of them have not yet been found out and their beauty is just beginning to be known. 35. The doorway of this storehouse lies in the side of a hill. It is twice as wide as a great barn door where the hay carts are driven in, and two railroad tracks run out of it side by side with the little footpath between them. 36. The entrance is light because it opens so wide, but we can see that the floor slopes downward and the way looks dark and narrow before us. 37. We shall need a guide and here comes one, a rough looking man with smutty clothes and an odd little lamp covered with wire gauze fastened to the front of his cap. 38. He is one of the workmen employed to bring the treasures out of this dark storehouse and he will show us by the light of his lamp some of the wonders of this place. 39. Walk down the sloping footpath now and be careful to keep out of the way of the little cars that are coming and going on each side of you, loaded on one side and empty on the other and seeming to run up and down by themselves, but you will find that they are really pulled and pushed by an engine that stands outside the doorway and reaches them by long chains. 40. At last we reach the foot of the slope and as our eyes become accustomed to the faint light, we can see passages leading to the right and left and square chambers cut out in the solid hill. 41. So this great green hill upon which you might run or play is inside like what I think some of those large ant hills must be, traversed by galleries in full rooms and long passages, all about we see men like our guide working by the light of their little lamps. 42. We hear the echoing sound of the tools and we see great blocks and heaps that they have broken away and loaded into little cars that stand ready here and there to be drawn by meals to the foot of the slope. 43. Now are you curious to know what this treasure is? Have you seen already that it is only coal and do you wonder that I think it's so precious? 44. Look a little closer while our guide lets the light of his lamp fall upon the black wall at your side. 45. Do you see the delicate tracery of ferns more beautiful than the ferris drawing? 46. See beneath your feet is the marking of great tree trunks lying a slant across a floor and the forms of gigantic palm leaves strewed among them. 47. Here is something different. Rounded like a nut shell you can split off one side and behold there is the nut lying snugly as does any test nut in its berth. 48. Did you notice the great pillars of coal that are left to uphold the roof? 49. Let us look at them for perhaps we can examine them more closely than we can the roof and the sides of these halls. 50. Here are mosses and little leaves and sometimes an odd looking little body that is not unlike some of the sea creatures we found at the beach last summer and everything is made of coal. 51. How did it happen and what does it mean? Ferns and palms mosses and trees and animals all perfect all beautiful and yet all hidden away under this hill and turned into shining black coal. 52. Now I can very well remember when I first saw a coal fire and how odd it looked to see what seemed to be burning stones. 53. For when I was a little girl we always had logs of wood blazing in an open fireplace and so did many other people and coal was just coming into use for fuel. 54. What should we have done if everybody had kept on burning wood to this day? 55. There would have been scarcely a tree left standing for think of all the locomotives and engines and factories besides all the fires and houses and church houses and school houses. 56. But God knew that we should have need of other fuels besides wood and so he made great forest to grow on the earth before he had made any men to live upon it. 57. These forests were of trees different in some ways from those we have now. Great ferns as tall as this house and mosses as high as little trees and palm leaves of enormous size. 58. And when they were all prepared he planned how they should be best stored up for the use of his children who would not be here to use them for many thousands of years to come. 59. So he let them grow and ripen and fall to the ground and then the great rocks were piled above them to crowd them compactly together and they were heated and heavily pressed until as the ages went by they changed slowly into these hard black shining stones and became better fuel than any wood because the substance of wood was concentrated in them. 60. Then the hills were piled up on top of it all but here and there some edge of a coal bed was tilted up and appeared above the ground. This served for a hint to curious men to make them ask what is this and what is it good for. 51. And so at last following their questions defined their way to the secret stores and make an open doorway and let the world in. So much for the fuel but God meant something else besides fuel when he packed this closet for his children. 52. At first they only understood the simplest and plainest value of the coal but there were some things that traveled the miners very much. One was a gas that would take fire from their lamps and burn making it dangerous for men to go into the passages where they were likely to meet it. 53. But by and by the wise men thought about it and said to themselves we must find out what useful purpose God made the gas for. We know that he does not make anything for harm only. The thought came to them that it might be prepared from coal and conducted through pipes to our houses to take the place of lamps or candles which until that time had been the only light. 54. But after making the gas there was a thick pitchy substance left from the coal called coal tar. It was only a trouble to the gas makers who had no use for it and even threw it away until someone more thoughtful than the others found out that water would not pass through it. 55. And so it began to be used to cover roofs of buildings and mixed with some other substances made of pavement for streets and being spread over ironwork it protected it from rust. 56. Don't you see how many uses we have found for this refuse coal tar? And the finest of it all is yet to come for the chemist got hold of it and distilled it and refined it until they prepared for the black dirty pitch lovely emerald colored crystals which had the property of dying silk and cotton and wool in beautiful colors. 57. Violet, magenta, purple or green? What do you think of that from the coal tar? When you have new ribbon for your hat or a pretty dress or your grandma buys a new violet ribbon for her cap just ask if there are dyed with aniline colors and if the answer is yes you may know that they came from the coal tar. 58. Besides the dyes we shall also have left naphtha useful in making varnish and various oils that are used in more ways than I can stop to tell you or you would care now to hear. 59. If your cousin Annie has a jet belt clasp or bracelet and if you find in Annie this box of old treasures an old odd shaped brooch of jet then you may remember the coal again. 60. For jet is only one kind of lignite which is a name for a certain preparation of coal but here is another surprise of a different kind. You have seen boxes of hard smooth white candles with a name paraffin marked on the cover. 61. Would you think black coal could ever undergo such a change as to come out in the form of these white candles? Go to the factory where they are made and you can see the whole process and then you will understand one more of God's meanings for coal. 62. All this time I have not said a word about how while the great forest landed pressure for millions of years the oils that were in the growing plant just as oils are in main growing plants now were pressed out and flowed into underground reservoirs lying hidden there until one day not many years ago a man accidentally bored into one. 63. Up came the oil spouting and running over gushing out and streaming down to a little river that ran nearby. As it floated on the surface of the water for oil and water will not mix you know the boys for mischief set fire to it and a stream of fire rolled along down the river proving to everybody who saw it that a new light as good as gas had come from the coal. 64. Now those of us who have kerosene lamps may thank the oil wells that were prepared for us so many years ago. When your hands or lips are cracked and rough from the cold does your mother ever put on glycerin to heal them? 65. If she does you are indebted again to the coal oil for of that it is partly made and now let me tell you that almost all the uses for coal have been found out since I was a child and by the time you are men and women you may be sure that as many more will be discovered. If not from that storehouse certainly from some of the many others that our good father has prepared for us and hidden among the mountains or in the deserts or perhaps under your very feet today. For thousands of people walked over those hills of coal before one saw the treasures that lay hidden there. I have only told you enough to teach you how to look for yourselves. A peep you know is all I promised you. Some time we may open another door together. There were plenty of gold-green beetles in the forest. Their violet-colored cousins also held royal state there. And scarlet or yellow with black trimmings was the uniform of many a gay troupe that careered in splendor through the vine-hung aisles of the hot damp woods. But clinging to the gray bark of some tree or lying concealed among the damp leaves in a swamp was the gayest and fairest of them all, if the truth be told. A little blackish-brown bug, dingy and hairy, not pleasant to look upon, you will say, surely not related to such winged splendors as play in the sunlight. Yet he is true first cousin to the green and gold or to the royal violet. Has as fair a title to a place in your regard and will prove it, if you will only wait his time. He is like those plain people whom we pass every day without notice until some great trial or difficulty cause out a hidden power within them, and they flash into greatness in some noble action and prove their kinship to God. We need not wait long, for as soon as the sun has set our dull blackish bug unfolds his wings and reveals his latent glory. He becomes a star, a spark from the sun's very self. If you can prevail upon him to condescend to attend you, you may read or write by his light alone. But come with me to this Indian's hut, where instead of lamp, candle, or torch, three or four of these luminous insects make all the dwelling bright. See the Indian hunter preparing for a journey, or a raid upon the forest beasts, by fastening to his hands and feet the little lantern flies that shall make the pathway light before him. When the Indian wants his brilliant little servants, he goes out on some little hillock, waving a lighted torch and calling them by name. Kukui! Kukui! And quickly they crowd around him in troops. And here I must tell you a little Japanese story. The young lady Firefly is courted by her many suitors, who themselves carry no light. She is shy and reserved. She will not accept the attentions. But when so impotent that she sees no other escape, she cries, Let him who really loves me go bring me a light like my own, as a proof of his affection. Then the daring lovers rush blindly at the nearest fire or candle, and perish in the flame. But to return to the Indian. Not only do his lantern flies illuminate his path, but they go on before him, like an advanced guard, to clear the road of its infecting mosquitoes, gnats and other troublesome insects, which they seize and devour on the wing. No harm would the Indian do to his little torchbearer, for besides the service he renders, does he not embody a portion of the sun god, the holy fire? And there are times when, with reverent awe, these simple forest children think they see in the kukui the souls of their departed friends. And now if we leave the forest and enter the gay ballroom of some tropical city, we shall find that the kukui is a cosmopolitan, at home alike in palace and in hut, in forest and city. Not only does he, as a wise little four-year-old friend of mine said, light the toads to bed, but restrained by invisible folds of gauze, he flutters in the hair of the fairest ladies, and rivals those earth stars, the diamonds. But it is hardly fair to show only the bright side, even of a kukui, and in justice I must tell that the sugar planters see with dismay their little torches among the canes. For all the mosquitoes and gnats will do for food and forest where sugar is not to be had. Who would taste them when a field of cane is all before you? Where to choose? Look at this mass of white jelly floating in a bowl of pond water. It is clear and delicate, formed of little globes the size of peas, held together in one rounded mass. In each globe is a black dot. I have it all in my room, and I watch it every day. Before a week passes, the black dots have lengthened into little fishy bodies, each lying curled in his globe of jelly. For these globes are eggs, and these dots are soon to be little living animals. We will see of what kind. Presently, they begin to jerk backwards and forwards, and perform such simple gymnastics as the small accommodations of the egg will allow. And at last one morning to my delight, I find two or three of the little things free from the egg, and swimming like so many tiny fishes in my bowl of water. How fast they come out now. Five this morning, but twenty tonight, and thrice as many tomorrow. The next day I conclude that the remaining eggs will not hatch, for they still show only dull, dead looking dots. So reluctantly I throw them away, wash out my bowl, and fill it anew with pond water. But before doing this, I had to catch all my little family, and put them safely into a tumbler to remain during their house cleaning. This was hard work, but I accomplished it with the help of a teaspoon, and soon restored them to a fresh clean home. It would be difficult to tell you all their history, for never did little things grow faster or change more wonderfully than they. One morning I found them all arranged round the sides of the bowl, in regular military ranks, as straight and stiff as a company on dress parade. It was then that I counted them, and discovered that there were just sixty-two. You would think, at first sight, that these sixty-two brothers and sisters were all exactly alike. But after watching them a while you see that one begins to distinguish himself as stronger and more advanced than any of the others, the captain perhaps, of the military company. Soon he sports a pair of little feathery gills on each side of his head. As a young officer might support his mustache. But these gills, unlike the mustache, are for use as well as for ornament, and serve him as breathing tubes. How the little fellows grow. No longer a little slim fish, but quite a portly tadpole with rounded body and a long tail, but still with no expression in his blunt-nosed face, and only two black-looking pits where the eyes are to grow. The others are not slow to follow their captain's example. Day after day some new little fellow shows his gills and begins to swim by paddling with his tail in a very stylish manner. And now a sad thing happens to my family of sixty-two. Something which would never have happened had I left the eggs at home in their own pond. For there are plenty of tiny water plants whose leaves and stems serve for many a delicious meal to young tadpoles. I did not feed them, not knowing what to give them, and half imagining that they could live very well upon water only. And so it happened that one morning when I was taking them out with a spoon as usual to give them fresh water, I counted only fifty. Where were the others? At the bottom of the bowl lay a dozen little tails, and I was forced to believe that the stronger tadpoles had taken their weaker brothers for supper. I didn't like to have my family broken up in this way, and yet I didn't at that time know what to give them, so the painful proceeding was not checked. And day after day my strongest tadpoles grew even stronger and the tails of the weaker lay at the bottom of the bowl. The captain-throw finally had clear bright eyes, lost his feathery gills, and showed through his thin skin that he had a set of excellent legs folded up inside. At last one day he kicked out the two hind ones, and after that was never tired of displaying his new swimming powers. The forelegs following in due time, and when all this was done, the tail, which he no longer needed to steer with, dropped off, and my largest tadpole became a little frog. His brothers and sisters, such of them were left, for I grieved to say he had required a great many hearty meals to enable him to reach the frog state. Followed his illustrious example as soon as they were able, and then of course my little bowl of water was no suitable home for them. So away they went out into the grass, among shallow pools and into the swamps. I never knew exactly where. And I am afraid that, should I meet even my progressive little captain again, I should hardly recognize him. So grown and altered would he be. He no longer devours his brothers, but with a tongue as long as his body, seizes slugs and insects and swallows them whole. In the winter he sleeps with his brothers and sisters, with the bottom of some pond or marsh for a bed, where they all pack themselves away, hundreds together, laid so closely that you can't distinguish one from the other. But early in the spring, you may hear their loud croaking, and when the March sun has thawed the ice from the ponds, the mother frogs are all very busy with their eggs, which they leave in the shallow water around jelly-like masses, like the one I told you of at the beginning of this story, made up of hundreds and hundreds of eggs. For the frog mother hopes for a large family of children, and she knows, by sad experience, that no sooner are they born than the fishes snap them up by the dozen, and even after they have found their legs and begin to feel old, and competent to take care of themselves, the snakes and weasels will not hesitate to take two or three for breakfast, if they come in the way. So you see the mother frog has good reason for laying so many eggs. The toads, too, by the way, are cousins to the frogs. Come down in April to lay their eggs also in the water. Long necklaces of a double row of fine, transparent eggs, each one showing its black dot, which is to grow into a tadpole, and swim about with its cousins the frog tadpoles. While they all look so much alike that I fancy their own mothers do not know them apart. I once picked up a handful of them and took some home. One grew up to be a charming little tree toad, while some of his companions gave good promise by their big awkward forms of growing by and by into great bullfrogs. End of Section 13. Recorded by Colleen Dick, dorkage.net, Corvallis, Oregon, 13 June 2008. Section 14 of The Story's Mother Nature Told Her Children. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Story's Mother Nature Told Her Children by Jane Andrews. Section 14. Goldenrod and Asters. Do you know that flowers, as well as people, live in families? Come into the garden and I will show you how. Here is a red rose. The beautiful bright-colored petals are the walls of the house, built in a circle, you see. Next come the yellow stamen, standing also in a circle. These are the father of the household. Perhaps you would say the fathers. There are so many. They stand around the mother who lives in the very middle as if they were put there to protect and take care of her. And she is the straight little pistol standing in the midst of all. The children are seeds put away for the present in a green cradle at their mother's feet where they will sleep and grow as babies should. Until by and by they will all have opportunities to come out and build for themselves fine rose-colored houses like that of their parents. It is in this way that most of the flowers live. Some it is true quite differently. For the beautiful scarlet maple blossoms that open so early in the spring have the fathers on one tree and the mothers on another. And they can only make flying visits to each other when a high wind chooses to give them a ride. The goldenrod and asters and some of their cousins have yet another way of living and it is of this I must tell you today. You know the roadside asters, purple and white, that bloom so plentiously all through the early autumn? Each flower is a circle of little rays spreading on every side. But if you should pull it to pieces to look for a family like that of the rose, you would be sadly confused about it. For the asters plan of living is very different from the roses. Each purple or white ray is a little home in itself and these are all inhabited by maiden ladies living each one alone in the one delicately colored room of her house. But in the middle of the aster you will find a dozen or more little families all packed away together. Each one has its own small yellow house each has the father mother and one child. They all live here together on the flat circle which is called a disc and round them are built the houses belonging to the maiden aunts who watch and protect the whole. This is what we might call living in a community. People do so sometimes. Different families who like to be near each other will take a very large house and inhabit it together so that in one house there will be many fathers, mothers and children and very likely maiden aunts and bachelor uncles besides. Do you understand now how the asters live in communities? The Golden Rod also lives in communities but yet not exactly after the asters plan in smaller houses generally and these of course contain fewer families. Four or five of the maiden aunts live in yellow walled rooms around the outside and in the middle live fathers, mothers and children as they do in the asters but here is the difference. If the Golden Rod has smaller houses it has more of them together upon one stem. I have never counted them but you can now that they are in bloom and tell me how many. And have you ever noticed how gracefully these great companies are arranged? For the Golden Rods are like elm trees in their forms. Some grow in one single tall plume bending over a little at the top. Some in a double or triple plume so that the nodding heads may bend on each side. But the largest are like great Etruscan elms. Many branches rising gracefully from the main stem and curving over on every side like those tall glass bosses which I dare say you have all seen. Do not forget when you are looking at these golden plumes that each one as it tosses in the wind is rocking its hundreds of little dwellings with the fathers, mothers, babies and all. When you go out for Golden Rod and Asters you will find also the Great Purple Thistle one of those cousins who has adopted the same plan of living. It is so prickly that I advise you not to attempt breaking it off but only with your fingertips push softly down into the purple tassel. And if the thistle is ripe as I think it will be in these autumn days you will feel a bit of softness down under the spreading purple top. A little gentle pushing will set the down all astir and I can show you how the children are about to take leave of the home where they were born and brought up. Each seed child has a downy wing with which it can fly and also cling as you will see if we set them loose and the wind blows them on to your woolen frock. They are hearty children and are not afraid of anything. They venture out into the world fearlessly and presume to plant themselves and prepare to build wherever they choose without regard to the rights of the farmer's plowed field or your mother's nicely laid out garden. More of the community flowers are the immortals and in spring the dandelions. Examine them and tell me how they build their houses and what sort of families they have, how the children go away when the house is broken up and what becomes of the fathers, mothers and aunts. End of section 14 End of The Story's Mother Nature Told Her Children by Jane Andrews Recording by SeanMegahy.tapkeye.net