Flamsted quarries Part 54

"They are all three taken from the crust of the earth; this Earth is to them the earth-mother. Now mark again what I say:--this fact of their common earth-mother puts them in the Brotherhood--of Kin."

He took up three specimens of quartz crystals.

"This quartz crystal"--he turned it in the light, and the hexagonal prisms caught and reflected dazzling rays--"I found in the limestone quarry on the Bay. This," he took up another smaller one, "I found after a long search in the marble quarries of Vermont. This here," he held up a third, a smaller, less brilliant, less perfect one--"I took out of our upper quarry after a three weeks' search for it.

"This fact, that these rocks, although of different market value and put to different uses, may yield the same perfect crystal, puts the limestone, the marble, the granite in the Brotherhood--of Equality.

"In our other talks, we have named the elements of each rock, and given some study to each. We have found that some of their elements are the basic elements of our own mortal frames--our bodies have a common earth-mother with these stones.

"This last fact puts them in the Brotherhood--of Man."

The seven hundred men showed their appreciation of the point made by prolonged applause.

"Now I want to make clear to you that, although these rocks have different market values, are put to different uses, the real value for us this evening consists in the fact that each, in its own place, can yield a crystal equal in purity to the others.--Remember this the next time you go to work in the quarries and the sheds."

He laid aside the specimens.

"We had a talk last month about the guilds of four hundred years ago. I asked you then to look upon yourselves as members of a great twentieth century working guild. Have you done it? Has every man, who was present then, said since, when hewing a foundation stone, a block for a bridge abutment, a corner-stone for a cathedral or a railroad station, a cap-stone for a monument, a milestone, a lintel for a door, a hearthstone or a step for an altar, 'I belong to the great guild of the makers of this country; I quarry and hew the rock that lays the enduring bed for the iron or electric horses which rush from sea to sea and carry the burden of humanity'?--Think of it, men! Yours are the hands that make this great track of commerce possible. Yours are the hands that curve the stones, afterwards reared into n.o.ble arches beneath which the people a.s.semble to do G.o.d reverence. Yours are the hands that square the deep foundations of the great bridges which, like the Brooklyn, cross high in mid-air from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e! Have you said this? Have you done it?"

"Ay, ay.--Sure.--We done it." The murmuring a.s.sent was polyglot.

"Very well--see that you keep on doing it, and show that you do it by the good work you furnish."

He motioned to the manipulators in the gallery to make ready for the stereopticon views. The blank blinding round played erratically on the curtain. The entire audience sat expectant.

There was flashed upon the screen the interior of a Canadian "cabin."

The family were at supper; the whole interior, simple and homely, was indicative of warmth and cheerful family life.

The Canucks in the audience lost their heads. The clapping was frantic.

Father Honore smiled. He tapped the portrayed wall with the end of his pointer.

"This is comfort--no cold can penetrate these walls; they are double plastered. Credit limestone with that!"

The audience showed its appreciation in no uncertain way.

"The crystal--can any one see that--find that in this interior?"

The men were silent. Father Honore was pointing to the mother and her child; the father was holding out his arms to the little one who, with loving impatience, was reaching away from his mother over the table to his father. They comprehended the priest's thought in the lesson of the limestone:--the love and trust of the human. No words were needed. An emotional silence made itself felt.

The picture s.h.i.+fted. There was thrown upon the screen the marble Cathedral of Milan. A murmur of delight ran through the house.

"Here we have the limestone in the form of marble. Its beauty is the price of unremitting toil. This, too, belongs in the brotherhoods of labor, kin, and equality.--Do you find the crystal?"

His pointer swept the hierarchy of statues on the roof, upwards to the cross on the pinnacle, where it rested.

"This crystal is the symbol of what inspires and glorifies humanity. The crystal is yours, men, if with believing hearts you are willing to say 'Our Father' in the face of His works."

He paused a moment. It was an understood thing in the semi-monthly talks, that the men were free to ask questions and to express an opinion, even, at times, to argue a point. The men's eyes were fixed with keen appreciation on the marble beauty before them, when a voice broke the silence.

"That sounds all right enough, your Reverence, what you've said about 'Our Father' and the brotherhoods, but there's many a man says it that won't own me for a brother. There's a weak joint somewhere--and no offence meant."

Some of the men applauded.

Father Honore turned from the screen and faced the men; his eyes flashed. The audience loved to see him in this mood, for they knew by experience that he was generally able to meet his adversary, and no odds given or taken.

"That's you, is it, Szchenetzy?"

"Yes, it's me."

"Do you remember in last month's talk that I showed you the Dolomites--the curious mountains of the Tyrol?--and in connection with those the Brenner Pa.s.s?"

"Yes."

"Well, something like seven hundred years ago a poor man, a poet and travelling musician, was riding over that pa.s.s and down into that very region of the Dolomites. He made his living by stopping at the stronghold-castles of those times and entertaining the powerful of the earth by singing his poems set to music of his own making. Sometimes he got a suit of cast-off clothes in payment; sometimes only bed and board for a time. But he kept on singing his little poems and making more of them as he grew rich in experience of men and things; for he never grew rich in gold--money was the last thing they ever gave him. So he continued long his wandering life, singing his songs in courtyard and castle hall until they sang their way into the hearts of the men of his generation. And while he wandered, he gained a wonderful knowledge of life and its ways among rich and poor, high and low; and, pondering the things he had seen and the many ways of this world, he said to himself, that day when he was riding over the Brenner Pa.s.s, the same thing that you have just said--in almost the same words:--'Many a man calls G.o.d "Father" who won't acknowledge me for a brother.'

"I don't know how he reconciled facts--for your fact seems plain enough--nor do I know how you can reconcile them; but what I do know is this:--that man, poor in this world's goods, but rich in experience and in a natural endowment of poetic thought and musical ability, _kept on making poems, kept on singing them_, despite that fact to which he had given expression as he fared over the Brenner; despite the fact that a suit of cast-off clothes was all he got for his entertainment of those who would not call him 'brother.' Discouraged at times--for he was very human--he kept on giving the best that was in him, doing the work appointed for him in this world--and doing it with a whole heart G.o.dwards and Christwards, despite his poverty, despite the broken promises of the great to reward him pecuniarily, despite the world, despite _facts_, Szchenetzy! He sang when he was young of earthly love and in middle age of heavenly love, and his songs are cherished, for their beauty of wisdom and love, in the hearts of men to this day."

He smiled genially across the sea of faces to Szchenetzy.

"Come up some night with your violin, Szchenetzy, and we will try over some of those very songs that the Germans have set to music of their own, those words of Walter of the Bird-Meadow--so they called him then, and men keep on calling him that even to this day."

He turned again to the screen.

"What is to be thrown on the screen now--in rapid succession for our hour is brief--I call our Marble Quarry. Just think of it! quarried by the same hard work which you all know, by which you earn your daily bread; sculptured into forms of exceeding beauty by the same hard toil of other hands. And behind all the toil there is the _soul of art_, ever seeking expression through the human instrument of the practised hand that quarries, then sculptures, then places, and builds! I shall give a word or two of explanation in regard to time and locality; next month we will take the subjects one by one."

There flashed upon the screen and in quick succession, although the men protested and begged for an extension of exposures, the n.o.ble Pisan group and Niccola Pisano's pulpit in the baptistery--the horses from the Parthenon frieze--the Zeus group from the great altar at Pergamos--Theseus and the Centaur--the Wrestlers--the Discus Thrower and, last, the exquisite little church of Saint Mary of the Thorn,--the Arno's jewel, the seafarers' own,--that looks out over the Pisan waters to the Mediterranean.

It was a magnificent showing. No words from Father Honore were needed to bring home to his audience the lesson of the Marble Quarry.

"I call the next series, which will be shown without explanation and merely named, other members of the Brotherhood of Stone. We study them separately later on in the summer."

The cathedrals of York, Amiens, Westminster, Cologne, Mayence, St.

Mark's--a n.o.ble array of man's handiwork, were thrown upon the screen.

The men showed their appreciation by thunderous applause.

The screen was again a blank; then it filled suddenly with the great Upper Quarry in The Gore. The granite ledges sloped upward to meet the blue of the sky. The great steel derricks and their crisscrossing cables cast curiously foreshortened shadows on the gleaming white expanse. Here and there a group of men showed dark against a ledge. In the centre, one of the monster derricks held suspended in its chains a forty-ton block of granite just lifted from its eternal bed. Beside it a workman showed like a pigmy.

Some one proposed a three times three for the home quarries. The men rose to their feet and the cheers were given with a will. The ringing echo of the last had not died away when the quarry vanished, and in its place stood the finished cathedral of A.--the work which the hands of those present were to create. It was a reproduction of the architect's water-color sketch.

The men still remained standing; they gave no outward expression to their admiration; that, indeed, although evident in their faces, was overshadowed by something like awe. _Their_ hands were to be the instruments by which this great creation of the mind of man should become a fact. Without those hands the architect's idea could not be materialized; without the "idea" their daily work would fail.

The truth went home to each man present--even to that unknown one beneath the gallery who, when the men had risen to cheer, shrank farther into his dark corner and drew short sharp breaths. The Past would not down at his bidding; he was beginning to feel his weakness when he had most need of strength.

He did not hear Father Honore's parting words:--"Here you find the third crystal--strength, solidity, the bedrock of endeavor. Take these three home with you:--the pure crystal of human love and trust, the heart believing in its Maker, the strength of good character. There you have the three that make for equality in this world--and nothing else does.

Good night, my friends."

VI