f time
are like the waves of the ocean; the only thing they beat against
without destroying it is a rock; and they destroy that at last. But it
takes a good while. There is a stone now standing in very good order
that was as old as a monument of Louis XIV. and Queen Anne's day is
now when Joseph went down into Egypt. Think of the shaft on Bunker Hill
standing in the sunshine on the morning of January 1st in the year 5872!

It won't be standing,--the Master said.--We are poor bunglers compared
to those old Egyptians. There are no joints in one of their obelisks.
They are our masters in more ways than we know of, and in more ways than
some of us are willing to know. That old Lawgiver wasn't learned in all
the wisdom of the Egyptians for nothing. It scared people well a couple
of hundred years ago when Sir John Marsham and Dr. John Spencer ventured
to tell their stories about the sacred ceremonies of the Egyptian
priesthood. People are beginning to find out now that you can't study
any religion by itself to any good purpose. You must have comparative
theology as you have comparative anatomy. What would you make of a cat's
foolish little good-for-nothing collar-bone, if you did not know how
the same bone means a good deal in other creatures,--in yourself, for
instance, as you 'll find out if you break it? You can't know too much
of your race and its beliefs, if you want to know anything about your
Maker. I never found but one sect large enough to hold the whole of me.

--And may I ask what that was?--I said.

--The Human sect,--the Master answered. That has about room enough for
me,--at present, I mean to say.

--Including cannibals and all?--said I.

-Oh, as to that, the eating of one's kind is a matter of taste, but the
roasting of them has been rather more a specialty of our own particular
belief than of any other I am acquainted with. If you broil a saint, I
don't see why, if you have a mind, you shouldn't serve him up at your--

Pop! went the little piece of artillery. Don't tell me it was accident.
I know better. You can't suppose for one minute that a boy like that
one would time his interruptions so cleverly. Now it so happened that
at that particular moment Dr. B. Franklin was not at the table. You may
draw your own conclusions. I say nothing, but I think a good deal.

--I came back to the Bunker Hill Monument.--I often think--I said--of
the dynasty which is to reign in its shadow for some thousands of years,