When I looked
back the blue spirit was towering up and stretching and rolling away
like a cloud, and instantly I thought of the name of it--SMOKE!--though,
upon my word, I had never heard of smoke before.
Soon brilliant yellow and red flares shot up through the smoke, and I
named them in an instant--FLAMES--and I was right, too, though these
were the very first flames that had ever been in the world. They
climbed the trees, then flashed splendidly in and out of the vast and
increasing volume of tumbling smoke, and I had to clap my hands and
laugh and dance in my rapture, it was so new and strange and so
wonderful and so beautiful!
He came running, and stopped and gazed, and said not a word for many
minutes. Then he asked what it was. Ah, it was too bad that he should
ask such a direct question. I had to answer it, of course, and I did.
I said it was fire. If it annoyed him that I should know and he must
ask; that was not my fault; I had no desire to annoy him. After a pause
he asked:
"How did it come?"
Another direct question, and it also had to have a direct answer.
"I made it."
The fire was traveling farther and farther off.
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