men and women in this time , who would have laughed at our old customs , believed in absolutely preposterous explanations of things- take , for example , how a hailstone comes to form , from a speck of dust in the upper atmosphere , falling , then rising , gathering ice to itself , falling again , then rising again , and becoming larger and larger , till some perfect moment is reached at which the hailstone breaks the circuit and falls to earth and then , after all of that , all of that wondrous process , melts to nothing .