The Council Bluffs nonpareil. [volume] (Council Bluffs [Iowa]) 1857-1867, 1858-11-06
OF THE MASON. LABoRs

| IDURABLESESS OF THE MASONss LABORN
| Those who write books think that they
will be studied by eyes which will not, per-
haps, see the light before thousand times
thousand years from this time. Accord
ing to what people say, carpenters who make
presses and cabinets, please themselves by
thinking, if this is well waxed, well put to-
gether, thoroughly dry, it will last and pre-
serve the impress Of my hand from genera
ton to generation, in the house where the
new married pair settle themselves. =.
Those who plant chestnut tree or an oak
say: The little pip Of little kernel that |
| SOW. contains here, between nv fingers, more
life and more time hidden within its thin
covering, than the life and time hidden with
| in all the men who are born or who are to
be born, in this vast country during five or
six centuries. They will thrust forth their
roots deep into the earth--they will pierce
the rock TO draw up their ourIshment-they
will spread their leaves and their shadow
over the place that choose for them, after
the shadow Of my own body, and the shad-
ows of twenty or thirty generations of men
proceeding from me, have been swept from
the face of the earth, as the leaves at their
feet are swept by the November wind.
But what is that in comparison with the
duration that the stone mason gives to his
idea, as he raises and lowers his malles or
bis chisel? He says to himself: "This
stroke of my hammer will remain engraved
on this granite till the mountain itself is
melted in the fires of the earth's last day:
this moding that have followed or raised
in relief with my chisel; this form that give
according to my fancy to the stone, will not
be worn out nor efraced, nor unfolded.
as long rs the world lasts; the impression
of my will and my hand is eternity.;'
Those who are not born for a thousand
years, when they see this cornice, this mould
ing. this pannel, this socle. this column, this
ter bubbles eternally, will say to themselves:
calls back his earth to himself, and turns it
round in his hand, at the end of time, to ex-
anime it, he will say, as he looks at these,
rents that the quarry had made in his noun
tains, and the marks Of tools on these brok-
en- stones. Gan insect has knawed NV
earth, and man has touched, has modified
my element" Think Of that, sir: Is that
not something to make the stonemason
proud Of his trade?-for, indeed, it is a call
ius that has to do with things that last for
ever.
Rust wears away the blacksmith's iron,,
but granite or red orphyry, of which you
see some small pieces among the pebbles in
the stream there-nothing wears them away.
They say that in a eountry called Egypt,
there are heaps of hewn stone as high as
mountains, neither the use of which. nor
why, nor by whom they were raised in plat
forms one above another is known; nor in
what infinite distance of time it took place.
People, kings, priests, mysteries, history,
the bones OF the dead, all have crumbled
away, and been lost to the memory of men.
All have flowed down with the waters of
river they call the Nile-all have disap-
peared with the sand they call the desert;
very well! A soldier who came back from
Egypt, and described these pyramids to me,
told me of the quarries as large as the beds
of seas, from which these hewn stones have
been taken; told me that they still see some
10 the workshops, that are only half divided
by the saw Of the Egyptians, or the giants
Of those times: and that he has even seen on
Il brick enclosed within these stones the i'm
pressions of the foot and hand Of one of the
workmcn who built and fashioned these
monuments. Does that belong to time? and
are there many kings or queens who have
left trace of themselves in the world, us
completely their own, and as durable as that
man's:-Ldmariine's Stonemason.