d made, and at which in
armies and legions his workmen toiled and labored, were like living
things. They were made of steel and iron, but they moved like the brains
and nerves of men. They went where he directed them, and did what he
commanded, and moved at a touch. And though he talked little, when he
saw how I followed all that he did, he was a little moved towards me,
and spoke and explained to me the conceptions that were in his mind, one
rising out of another, like the leaf out of the stem and the flower out
of the bud. For nothing pleased him that he did, and necessity was upon
him to go on and on.

'They are like living things,' I said; 'they do your bidding, whatever
you command them. They are like another and a stronger race of men.'

'Men!' he said, 'what are men? The most contemptible of all things that
are made,--creatures who will undo in a moment what it has taken
millions of years, and all the skill and all the strength of generations
to do. These are better than men. They cannot think or feel. They cannot
stop but at my bidding, or begin unless I will. Had men been made so, we
should be masters of the world.'

'Had men been made so, you would never have been,--for what could genius
have done or thought?--you would have been a machine like all the rest.'

'And better so!' he said, and turned away; for at that moment, watching
keenly as he spoke the action of a delicate combination of movements, all
made and balanced to a hair's breadth, there had come to him suddenly the
idea of something which made it a hundredfold more strong and terrible.
For they were terrible, these things that lived yet did not live, which
were his slaves and moved at his will. When he had done this, he looked
at me, and a smile came upon his mouth; but his eyes smiled not, nor ever
changed from the set look they wore. And the words he spoke were familiar
words, not his, but out of the old life. 'What a piece of work is a man!'
he said; 'how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! in form and
moving how express and admirable! And yet to me what is this
quintessence of dust?' His mind had followed another strain of thought,
which to me was bewildering, so that I did not know how to reply. I
answered like a child, upon his last word.

'We are dust no more,' I cried, for pride was in my heart,--pride of him
and his wonderful strength, and his thoughts which created strength, and
all the marvels he did; 'those things which hindere