Something of the same spirit is manifested by the Chinese. The devil of their mythology is white. So our occidental sensibilities received quite a shock when we learned that we were “foreign devils.” The Japanese more considerately called us “foreign beasts,” as though uncertain of our status in the animal kingdom. And to this day our magnificent vessels are gravely styled “devil ships” by the Chinese. Such are what might be appropriately styled ludicrous exaggerations of perspective. And we of the west are similarly so wrapped up in our self-sufficiency that it hardly occurs to us that we may appear as amusing to foreigners as they to us. In this respect our charity begins at home. It is the way of the world. But there are a thousand occurrences that make us feel that the principle is just, no matter to what extremes we may foolishly carry it. It comes home to each with peculiar emphasis in the hour of distress. The famine in Asia does not weigh upon you so heavily as the death of the woman who starved in the garret across the street. A fire that burns Chicago is easier forgotten that the one which destroys the little home that represents the savings of years of your life. The cholera in India has no such terrors for you as the diphtheria or scarlet fever in your own village. The Czar of Russia is blown to pieces in his carriage; but he has no remembrance at the bedside of your sick friend. Ten thousand dead victims of a distant earthquake are hidden by the coffin in your own home. Since the same law applies to the interests of nations, it is not necessary, in reviewing the work of destructive tempests, to apologize for giving chief place to the recent Louisville tornado, however insignificant it may appear in comparison with scores of others that have desolated the earth in days gone by. The latter shall be noticed in due time. In the foregoing chapter we have seen that the great cyclones that occasionally visit us originate in the neighborhood of the Antilles. Of course, similar conditions may produce smaller storms of the same class in numerous localities. These small storms whose paths are but a few yards, or sometimes as much as a mile in diameter, are called, to distinguish them from the great cyclone of twenty to two hundred miles in diameter, by the Portuguese title of _tornados_, or “turning-storms.” Often the broken character of the country will cause a large gathering storm to break [Illustration: WHERE THE STORM ENTERED LOUISVILLE.] up into half a dozen or more of the smaller ones, which, in their narrow paths are as destructive as the cyclone.