and as the icebergs melted in the sun, the stones and the silt fell out of them, and covered me up; and I was in darkness once more, vexed by many an earthquake, till I became part of this brave English land. And now I am a pebble here in Reading street, to be ground beneath the wheels of busy men: and yet you cannot kill me, or hinder my fulfilling the law which cannot be broken. This year I am a pebble in the street; and next year I shall be dust upon the fields above; and the year after that I shall be alive again, and rise from the ground as fair green wheat-stems, bearing up food for the use of man. And even after that you cannot kill me. The trampled and sodden straw will rot only to enter into a new life; and I shall pass through a fresh cycle of strange adventures, age after age, till time shall be no more; doing my work in my generation, and fulfilling to the last the will of God, as faithfully as when I was the water-breathing sponge in the abysses of the old chalk sea." All this and more, gentlemen and ladies, the pebble could tell to you, and will: but he is old and venerable, and like old men, he wishes to be approached with respect, and does not like to be questioned too much or too rapidly; so that you must not be offended if you meet with more than one rebuff from him; or if he keeps stubborn silence, till he has seen that you are a modest and attentive person, to whom it is worth while to open a little of his forty or fifty thousand years' experience.