d not come.

But no matter. Nothing would have come of it, for he does not care for
flowers. He called them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and
thinks it is superior to feel like that. He does not care for me, he
does not care for flowers, he does not care for the painted sky at
eventide--is there anything he does care for, except building shacks to
coop himself up in from the good clean rain, and thumping the melons,
and sampling the grapes, and fingering the fruit on the trees, to see
how those properties are coming along?

I laid a dry stick on the ground and tried to bore a hole in it with
another one, in order to carry out a scheme that I had, and soon I got
an awful fright. A thin, transparent bluish film rose out of the hole,
and I dropped everything and ran! I thought it was a spirit, and I WAS
so frightened! But I looked back, and it was not coming; so I leaned
against a rock and rested and panted, and let my limps go on trembling
until they got steady again; then I crept warily back, alert, watching,
and ready to fly if there was occasion; and when I was come near, I
parted the branches of a rose-bush and peeped through--wishing the man
was about, I was looking so cunning and pretty--but the sprite was gone.
I went there, and there was a pinch of delicate pink dust in the hole.
I put my finger in, to feel it, and said OUCH! and took it out again. It
was a cruel pain. I put my finger in my mouth; and by standing first on
one foot and then the other, and grunting, I presently eased my misery;
then I was full of interest, and began to examine.

I was curious to know what the pink dust was. Suddenly the name of it
occurred to me, though I had never heard of it before. It was FIRE! I
was as certain of it as a person could be of anything in the world. So
without hesitation I named it that--fire.

I had created something that didn't exist before; I had added a new
thing to the world's uncountable properties; I realized this, and was
proud of my achievement, and was going to run and find him and tell him
about it, thinking to raise myself in his esteem--but I reflected, and
did not do it. No--he would not care for it. He would ask what it was
good for, and what could I answer? for if it was not GOOD for something,
but only beautiful, merely beautiful-- So I sighed, and did not go. For
it wasn't good for anything; it could not build a shack, it could not
improve melons, it could not hurry a fruit crop; it