When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens.
"Indeed they are, Wally. Which is why I'm here.
Very fine; but as we desire the reader to stay awake to the end of this blessed preface, we will not continue this very close imitation of the utilitarian style, which, by its nature, is unusually soporific, and might advantageously replace laudanum and the discourses of the Academy. I remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight.
As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. No one but a fumbling idiot would try anything as crude as speeding a dog over the line by pyrotics or by jolting the animals with a bolt of electrical energy."
When we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner. It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood.
I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed.