. Science
never betrays such partiality. The favors she bestows are conferred only
upon the industrious."

"And you deny absolutely the efficacy of prayer?" I asked.

"If I could obtain anything by prayer alone, I would pray that my
inventive faculty should be enlarged so that I might conceive and
construct an air-ship that could cleave its way through that chaos of
winds that is formed when two storms meet from opposite directions. It
would rend to atoms one of our present make. But prayer will never
produce an improved air-ship. We must dig into science for it. Our
ancestors did not pray for us to become a race of symmetrically-shaped
and universally healthy people, and expect that to effect a result. They
went to work on scientific principles to root out disease and crime and
want and wretchedness, and every degrading and retarding influence."

"Prayer never saved one of my ancestors from premature death," she
continued, with a resolution that seemed determined to tear from my mind
every fabric of faith in the consolations of divine interposition that
had been a special part of my education, and had become rooted into my
nature. "Disease, when it fastened upon the vitals of the young and
beautiful and dearly-loved was stronger and more powerful than all the
agonized prayers that could be poured from breaking hearts. But science,
when solicited by careful study and experiment and investigation,
offered the remedy. And _now_, we defy disease and have no fear of death
until our natural time comes, and _then_ it will be the welcome rest
that the worn-out body meets with gratitude."

"But when you die," I exclaimed, "do you not believe you have an after
life?"

"When I die," replied Wauna, "my body will return to the elements from
whence it came. Thought will return to the force which gave it. The
power of the brain is the one mystery that surrounds life. We know that
the brain is a mechanical structure and acted upon by force; but how to
analyze that force is still beyond our reach. You see that huge engine?
We made it. It is a fine piece of mechanism. We know what it was made to
do. We turn on the motive power, and it moves at the rate of a mile a
minute if we desire it. Why should it move? Why might it not stand
still? You say because of a law of nature that under the circumstances
compels it to move. Our brain is like that engine--a wonderful piece of
mechanism, and when the blood drives it, it displays the effec