of the world. Perhaps I wrong them. They may
have spiritual experiences transcending their gifts of speech. I don't
know.

"At that time, too, I was not seeking spiritual communion. The moment I
had caught sight of that little lathe I wanted to ask if he could make
screws. I wanted screws, brass ones with flat heads. As soon as I could
I explained this to him. Yes, he replied, with his smile of supreme
intelligence, he could make screws. How many? And the washer, could he
make that? Had he the material? I had the dimensions of that washer
burned into my brain and I made a little sketch of it on the bench. But
his education hadn't run to scale drawings, so I drew it in perspective
and repeated the figures with many gestures indicating roundness and
thickness and other properties. He began to make the screws, copying the
one I had made laboriously by hand. I offered to assist by putting my
foot on the treadle, but he said it was not necessary. 'Too many cooks
spoil the broth,' he added, and I felt disconcerted. He didn't mean
anything offensive, you know; he was only proud of his English. So I sat
watching him, or walked over to the little refrigerating plant
thundering away in the corner, with its shining oil cups and its pipes
covered with snow or glazed with ice. And while I stood looking at it, a
tall, bony native, a dirty loin-cloth wrapped about his middle, his ribs
and back all gashed with tribal scars and scaly with skin trouble, came
in and laid his corrugated forehead for a moment against the snow on the
pipes. He made an astonishing picture, with his thin arms outstretched
in support, as though he were supplicating the white man's god. It must
have been a confusing phenomenon to his simple mind, that fierce, hot,
galloping devil that made ice. And then he gathered a little of the soft
snow in his fingers and rubbed it over his face and lips and limped out
again. And every little while he or another bony creature very like him
would come in and go through the same performance. My friend at the
lathe never looked up, not caring to waste any of his precious time, I
suppose, but he observed, when I spoke of it, that the 'ignorant animals
liked the taste of snow.' I went back to the bench again and looked at
his fret-work. Goodness only knows why he was doing it. It was a
meaningless design of dots and wriggles. When I asked him he said he was
doing it for a Christmas present for his mother in Pernambuco. He added