So? You have been looking at that beautiful drawing of the ruin of Arica in the Illustrated London News: and it has puzzled you and made you sad. You want to know why God killed all those people--mothers among them, too, and little children?
Alas, my dear child! who am I that I should answer you that?
Have you done wrong in asking me? No, my dear child; no. You have asked me because you are a human being and a child of God, and not merely a cleverer sort of animal, an ape who can read and write and cast accounts. Therefore it is that you cannot be content, and ought not to be content, with asking how things happen, but must go on to ask why. You cannot be content with knowing the causes of things; and if you knew all the natural science that ever was or ever will be known to men, that would not satisfy you; for it would only tell you the CAUSES of things, while your souls want to know the REASONS of things besides; and though I may not be able to tell you the reasons of things, or show you aught but a tiny glimpse here and there of that which I called the other day the glory of Lady Why, yet I believe that somehow, somewhen, somewhere, you will learn something of the reason of things. For that thirst to know WHY was put into the hearts of little children by God Himself; and I believe that God would never have given them that thirst if He had not meant to satisfy it.
There--you do not understand me. I trust that you will understand me some day. Meanwhile, I think--I only say I THINK--you know I told you how humble we must be whenever we speak of Lady Why--that we may guess at something like a good reason for the terrible earthquakes in South America. I do not wish to be hard upon poor people in great affliction: but I cannot help thinking that they have been doing for hundreds of years past something very like what the Bible calls "tempting God"--staking their property and their lives upon the chances of no earthquakes coming, while they ought to have known that an earthquake might come any day. They have fulfilled (and little thought I that it would be fulfilled so soon) the parable that I told you once, of the nation of the Do- as-you-likes, who lived careless and happy at the foot of the burning mountain, and would not be warned by the smoke that came out of the top, or by the slag and cinders which lay all about them; till the mountain blew up, and destroyed them miserably.
Then I think that they ought to have expected an earthquake.
Well--it is not for us to judge any one, especially if they live in a part of the world in which we have not been ourselves. But I think that we know, and that they ought to have known, enough about earthquakes to have been more prudent than they have been for many a year. At least we will hope that, though they would not learn their lesson till this year, they will learn it now, and will listen to the message which I think Madam How has brought them, spoken in a voice of thunder, and written in letters of flame.
And what is that?
My dear child, if the landlord of our house was in the habit of pulling the roof down upon our heads, and putting gunpowder under the foundations to blow us up, do you not think we should know what he meant, even though he never spoke a word? He would be very wrong in behaving so, of course: but one thing would be certain,--that he did not intend us to live in his house any longer if he could help it; and was giving us, in a very rough fashion, notice to quit. And so it seems to me that these poor Spanish Americans have received from the Landlord of all landlords, who can do no wrong, such a notice to quit as perhaps no people ever had before; which says to them in unmistakable words, "You must leave this country: or perish." And I believe that that message, like all Lady Why's messages, is at heart a merciful and loving one; that if these Spaniards would leave the western coast of Peru, and cross the Andes into the green forests of the eastern side of their own land, they might not only live free from earthquakes, but (if they would only be good and industrious) become a great, rich, and happy nation, instead of the idle, and useless, and I am afraid not over good, people which they have been. For in that eastern part of their own land God's gifts are waiting for them, in a paradise such as I can neither describe nor you conceive;--precious woods, fruits, drugs, and what not--boundless wealth, in one word--waiting for them to send it all down the waters of the mighty river Amazon, enriching us here in the Old World, and enriching themselves there in the New.
If they would only go and use these gifts of God, instead of neglecting them as they have been doing for now three hundred years, they would be a blessing to the earth, instead of being-- that which they have been.
God grant, my dear child, that these poor people may take the warning that has been sent to them; "The voice of God revealed in facts," as the great Lord Bacon would have called it, and see not only that God has bidden them leave the place where they are now, but has prepared for them, in their own land, a home a thousand times better than that in which they now live.
But you ask, How ought they to have known that an earthquake would come?
Well, to make you understand that, we must talk a little about earthquakes, and what makes them; and in order to find out that, let us try the very ******st cause of which we can think. That is the wise and scientific plan.
Now, whatever makes these earthquakes must be enormously strong; that is certain. And what is the strongest thing you know of in the world? Think . . .
Gunpowder?
Well, gunpowder is strong sometimes: but not always. You may carry it in a flask, or in your hand, and then it is weak enough.
It only becomes strong by being turned into gas and steam. But steam is always strong. And if you look at a railway engine, still more if you had ever seen--which God forbid you should--a boiler explosion, you would agree with me, that the strongest thing we know of in the world is steam.