THE BUILDING OF THE CITY 
 BEAUTIFUL 
 
THE BUILDING 
 
 OF 
 
 THE CITY BEAUTIFUL 
 
 BY JOAQUIN MILLER 
 
 ALBERT BRANDT: PUBLISHER 
 
 TRENTON, NEW JERSEY 
 
 1905 
 
Copyright, 1904-1905, by Albert Brandt 
 
 Entered at Stationers Hall 
 Copyright, 1893, by C. H. Miller 
 
 Printed at THE BRANDT PRESS, Trenton, New Jirsiy, U. S. A. 
 
TO 
 ANDREW CARNEGIE 
 
 The Buildtr of Libraries 
 Beautiful 
 
 260108 
 
THE FOUNDATION stones of THE 
 CITY BEAUTIFUL" were hewn out in 
 Jerusalem and other Bible Lands of the Orient 
 long ago. After many years they were gathered 
 up and the building went slowly on as I planted 
 and wrought hard with hands and head away 
 out here by the great Sundown Seas. Three 
 small editions of parts of this book appeared 
 in 1894, when the plates were melted. It was 
 never really published till now so far as press 
 and public are concerned, the small and un 
 finished editions being absorbed mainly by 
 personal friends. 
 
 J. M. 
 
 THE MIGHTS, 
 
 DIMOND, CALIFORNIA. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 MOTHER AND HER BOY," .... Frontispiece 
 I. AN OLD WOMAN WITH A LOAD OF 
 
 WOOD, ii 
 
 II. "FEED MY SHEEP," za 
 
 III. "THE TIME is FULFILLED, AND THE 
 
 KINGDOM OF GOD is AT HAND," 32 
 
 IV. THE GROWING OF A SOUL, .... 41 
 V. How BEAUTIFUL! 48 
 
 VI. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT, ... 53 
 
 VII. IN THE SWEAT OF THY FACE, ... 59 
 
 VIII. THE CHRIST IN EGYPT, 83 
 
 IX. AWAITING THE RESURRECTION AT KAR- 
 
 NAK, . . . 88 
 
 X. THE VOICE OF TOIL, 99 
 
 XI. THE FOUNDATION STONES, . . . . 107 
 
 XII. THE FIRST LAW OF GOD, . . . . izo 
 
 XIII. FALLEN BY THE WAY, i9 
 
 XIV. UNDER THE OLIVE-TREES, . . . . 138 
 XV. As WHEN THE CHRIST SHALL COME 
 
 AGAIN, 151 
 
 9 
 
Contents 
 
 XVI. BEHOLD, THE CITY BEAUTIFUL! . . 158 
 
 XVII. IN HER PRESENCE AT LAST, . . . 165 
 XVIII. GIVE Us THIS DAY OUR DAILY 
 
 BREAD, i 79 
 
 XIX. THE TOIL OF GOD, 191 
 
 XX. WHEN MAN is NOT WATCHING MAN, 205 
 
 XXI. LESSONS NOT IN BOOKS, 211 
 
 XXII. THE TRULY BRAVE, 217 
 
 XXIII. GOING, 227 
 
 XXIV. PUT UP THY SWORD, 232 
 
 10 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE 
 CITY BEAUTIFUL 
 
 /. An Old Woman With a Load of 
 Wood 
 
 " Now HE is dead. Far hence he lies 
 
 In that lorn Syrian town j 
 And o er his grave with pitying eyes 
 The Syrian stars look down." 
 
 " How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the 
 kingdom of God ! For it is easier for a camel to go 
 through a needle s eye, than for a rich man to enter into 
 the kingdom of God." 
 
 SIR MOSES MONTEFIORE, of the house 
 of Rothschilds, and one of the very richest 
 men in all the world, was in Jerusalem. It was 
 his last of more than a score of pilgrimages to 
 the Holy City. 
 
 He had founded little colonies near Bethle 
 hem and in many places round about Jerusalem. 
 True, he was very old now ; but this remark 
 able man, who lived for more than a century, 
 was still full of purpose. 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 His last coming had created quite a sensation 
 among the Jews as a matter of course. The great 
 hospital hard by, the burial ground, the syna 
 gogue, all these were his gifts to the Jewish 
 people, and they were not ungrateful. 
 
 As for the Christians, they were scarcely less 
 eager to see the very rich old man. Bibles were 
 opened, and the lines at the head of this chapter 
 were read over and over again. 
 
 The man s great age now compelled him to 
 leave the direction of his work almost entirely to 
 others. Still he must know all that had been 
 done in his long absence in London. He wanted 
 to know just how the little colonies were getting 
 on. Were the people from Poland content ? 
 Were the Peasant Jews from Russia united and 
 tolerant of their less stalwart brothers ? Strange 
 how much stronger were those of the extreme 
 North than those who had been for generations 
 in Jerusalem and other warm lands ! 
 
 There were Jews returning to Jerusalem from 
 the banks of the Volga after an absence of a 
 thousand years ! and these were strong men. 
 They had crept out from under the snows of 
 Russia and come down to the city of David with 
 
An Old Woman With a Load of Wood 
 
 hair almost yellow and eyes as blue as their 
 sacred Syrian skies. Their expulsion from Jeru 
 salem had surely done them good. 
 
 The Jews of all kinds and of all countries who 
 had been established in their new homes by Sir 
 Moses came pouring in through the various gates 
 and passes on this day of his arrival. 
 
 And a little crowd of Christians, after reading 
 over and over again the words of Christ to the 
 ruler who was very rich, went down to a narrow 
 pass leading to the dirty and dismal market in 
 the valley of Jehoshaphat. 
 
 Peasants were crowding through the narrow 
 pass, about which so much has been said and 
 written, and about which really nothing, so far as 
 the words of Christ are concerned, is understood. 
 And a tall, dark woman stood there, looking at 
 the crowding peasants, a young and strangely 
 beautiful woman, silent, serene, dignified, and 
 commanding. 
 
 Some of the people had heavy loads on their 
 backs ; one had a lamb, one carried only a dove. 
 They were all on their way to market. They 
 then would go and see Sir Moses, and possibly 
 beg some money. 
 
 3 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 How they did jostle and wrangle, and abuse 
 and bully one another ! The man with only a 
 dove to carry would not give an inch of road or 
 room to an old woman who was bowed almost 
 to the ground under a load of sticks. 
 
 It was altogether a sad picture, and the serenely 
 beautiful face of the silent woman, who stood 
 there on the edge of the group of garrulous tour 
 ists, grew sad at the sight of it. 
 
 Time, then, taught nothing. Each was for 
 himself as of old. No pity, no sympathy, no 
 sincerity ! They were all mad, in haste to have 
 done with their marketing so that they might run 
 to where Sir Moses lodged and be the first to 
 beg a little money. 
 
 But this tall, dark woman on the outside of the 
 group of Christians was very patient. The dust 
 of travel was still on her sable garments. She was 
 seeking in vain for some gentle soul in that multi 
 tude of loud, aggressive, and half-savage Jews. 
 
 After the peasants had all crowded through and 
 left the " Needle s Eye " to the inspection of the 
 group of Christians, she turned with a sigh to go 
 away. 
 
 Suddenly some one in the knot of people who 
 14 
 
An Old Woman With a Load of Wood 
 
 held red guide-books in their hands, said emphat 
 ically and right in her face : 
 
 " That settles it for the rich man, I guess. 
 Sir Moses ought to put his money on a camel s 
 back and see if it could get through the Eye of 
 the Needle, eh ? " 
 
 There is an intoxication not always of the 
 wine-glass. Men and women say things and do 
 things in foreign places, especially when in 
 crowds, which they would not say or do if alone 
 and at home. Set a guard at the portals ; and if 
 you cannot keep sober, you can at least keep 
 silent. Every one at certain times and in certain 
 places is entitled to his own thoughts. They are 
 his property more entirely than his own money is 
 his. He has journeyed far to meditate here. This 
 rare moment has cost him much. And yet he 
 oftentimes hears only a rushing of feet over 
 sacred ground, and a Babel of voices in solemn 
 abbey or sublime cathedral. At such times one 
 thanks God that man is so very insignificant that 
 he may not be heard far. 
 
 The tall, dark lady did not reply. She prefer 
 red to pass on and seem not to hear. The better 
 portion of the crowd of tourists were angered ; 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 but as two or three laughed their assent the man 
 repeated his remark to the silent woman, thinking, 
 perhaps, that she did not understand English. 
 
 This young woman was she a Jewess ? 
 was traveling with Sir Moses Montefiore, as sec 
 retary, or something of the sort. The remark 
 able philanthropist, as said before, was making 
 the last of more than a score of pilgrimages to 
 the city of David. He had spent millions on 
 millions in his noble effort to re-people Palestine. 
 
 As you go up toward Jerusalem from the sea 
 you pass by pleasant little settlements, new and 
 fair and verdant as if in Idaho. Indeed, nearly all 
 of the land of Syria seems much like the varied 
 plains that stretch from the slopes of Idaho south 
 ward to the sea of Cortez, cattle and sheep and 
 horses, little fields of grain, orchards, thrift and 
 industry, in spots, as on our plains to-day. 
 
 It was mainly to look after these, and to add 
 to them with those of his people who were being 
 driven out of Russia, that the old Israelite had 
 resolved to come once more all the way from 
 London at his advanced age. 
 
 And it was the good fortune of his coming 
 that caused a new man of the new world and 
 16 
 
An Old Woman With a Load of Wood 
 
 this wondrously beautiful and strong and strange 
 woman of the old world to meet together at the 
 Eye of the Needle. Let us not recount the 
 details of their meeting. (^Strong souls meet_sud- 
 denly, as rivers meet when rushing to the same 
 great sea^ 
 
 " Yes, that gate settles the fate of the rich 
 man," added one of the crowd. The new man 
 of the new world was indignant. 
 
 And now her great, dark eye took fire. Her 
 brow grew dark. Her dark immensity of hair 
 seemed to take on a faint tinge of fire about the 
 face and at the tips. The new man of the new 
 world did not know at this time, nor did she 
 deign to tell any one, for she was a woman of 
 few words, like all really great women, that 
 she stood in very close relation to one of the 
 very richest men in the world. 
 
 Again she turned to go in silence. The man, 
 who had only half concealed his indignation at 
 the persistence of the garrulous tourist, stepped 
 forward, hat in hand, but said nothing. He was 
 not of the group of people who had come, guide 
 books in hand, to see the so-called Eye of the 
 Needle. Perhaps he had seen all there was to 
 z 17 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 see there long before. You can generally dis 
 tinguish traveled from untraveled people by their 
 quiet bearing. 
 
 The woman turned/ the third time to pass in 
 silence ; but still she persisted in glancing back. 
 
 Is it the remnant of wild beast in ire still that 
 makes all hunted or wounded human beings turn 
 quickly about to give battle ? But here was a 
 battle in her own heart. She was bursting with 
 indignation, yet she had trained her soul to soar 
 above resentment. So the cloud that lowered 
 about her glorious face blew over as the stranger 
 stood respectfully before her. But she did not 
 address herself to him or seem to note him at all. 
 She was concerned only to answer the man who 
 had so persistently referred to the fate of the rich 
 man. Slowly and softly she said : 
 
 " Yes, I have read, and I have also heard it 
 from the pulpit, that it was to this gate that Jesus 
 Christ referred when he spoke of the rich man." 
 
 The tall, grand woman drew her loose mantle 
 more closely about her throat, and lifting her eyes 
 looked away toward the hill on which stood the 
 camp of Titus when Jerusalem was overthrown; 
 and without intending it, or really knowing that 
 18 
 
An Old Woman With a Load of Wood 
 
 she did so, she looked entirely above the man 
 before her as she went on in an earnest, far-away 
 voice : 
 
 44 Yes, men have published, and men have 
 stood up and proclaimed, that Jesus referred to 
 this gate when he spoke of the eye of the needle, 
 because it was so extremely hard for a camel to 
 pass through here. That is to say, a camel could 
 pass through it only with great difficulty." She 
 paused, her proud lip curled as she continued : 
 
 41 How pitiful and helpless this interpretation, 
 and yet how simple and sublime the few plain 
 words of Jesus Christ ! Let us read them ! " 
 and as if reading in the air she repeated : " 4 How 
 hardly shall they that have riches enter into the 
 kingdom of God ! It is easier for a camel to go 
 through a needle s eye, than for a rich man to 
 enter into the kingdom of God. " 
 
 She paused, still looking far away ; then she 
 said : 4t That is to say, it is literally easier for a 
 camel to pass through the eye of a needle than 
 for a man to pass into heaven after death with 
 his riches on his back. He must lay aside his 
 wealth at the door of death, and enter the king 
 dom of God poor as the poorest." 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 She turned to go, and then again came back. 
 
 u Sir Moses Montefiore," she said gently, " is 
 a very rich man to-day, one of the richest in the 
 world j yet surely if any rich man enters, or 
 ever has entered, the kingdom of God he will. 
 No, no ! To say that the divine young Jew, 
 Jesus, shut the gates of heaven in the face of a 
 man because he had riches on earth, would be to 
 say that he was not Christ at all. True, he said 
 to the rich man, a ruler who came to ask him the 
 way, l Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto 
 the poor, . . . and come, follow me. But this 
 must have meant a literal following ; for soon he 
 took unto him the twelve and said unto them, 
 c Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things 
 that are written by the prophets concerning the 
 Son of Man shall be accomplished/ 
 
 The crowd had melted away, all but one man. 
 This man had bowed his head as she continued 
 to speak. When she ceased, his chin was on 
 his breast and his hat was still in his hand. He 
 knew he was hearing the voice of a soul. But 
 who could she be ? She spoke English fluently, 
 yet with an accent. She had been conversing in 
 French with a party as he approached. There 
 
An Old Woman With a Load of Wood 
 
 was a Catholic priest in this French party, and 
 was she not a Jewess ? A Jewess knowing more 
 of Christ than Christians ! 
 
 "All civilized peoples, whether Jews or 
 Christians, of to-day are comparatively rich ; 
 and when this world shall be all civilized we 
 shall all be very rich. Yet shall we not all enter 
 the kingdom of God ? " 
 
 These few last words of the dark and silent 
 woman were said as if entirely to herself. 
 
II. "Feed My Sheep" 
 
 COME, let us ponder ; it is fit 
 
 Born of the poor, born to the poor 
 
 The poor of purse, the poor of wit 
 Were first to find God s opening door, 
 
 Were first to climb the ladder, round by round, 
 
 That fell from heaven s door unto the ground. 
 
 God s poor came first, the very first ! 
 
 God s poor were first to see, to hear, 
 To feel the light of heaven burst 
 
 Full on their faces far or near, 
 His poor were first to follow, first to fall ! 
 What if at last His poor stand forth the first of all? 
 
 THIS is not entirely a love story. It is not 
 a religious or irreligious story. It is the 
 record of one, or rather two persons who believed 
 that man is not only entitled to the pursuit of 
 happiness but to the attainment of happiness, real 
 and substantial, upon earth. 
 
 The woman, Miriam, was indeed a Jewess, a 
 Jewess and it is said with reverence as Mary, 
 the mother of Christ, was a Jewess. 
 
 She was from Russia, or, more properly, from 
 Siberia, where she had spent her hard, bitter girl 
 hood sitting by her broken and exiled father s bed. 
 
"Feed My Sheep " 
 
 Death, his death, had liberated them both at once, 
 and she had gone direct to London, and found 
 employment with Sir Moses in his effort to amel 
 iorate the condition of her people. 
 
 Her trustworthiness, her quiet wisdom in all 
 matters intrusted to her, had soon placed her in 
 the highest position and most influential relations 
 with the great men of her race. But she was 
 growing, growing rapidly, and soon she grew 
 beyond the narrow limits of race or creed. She 
 came to believe in all good of all religion. Forms 
 and fashions she put aside, as the cloth that 
 covered His face was put aside on the third day. 
 
 Miriam was a devout worshiper in the syna 
 gogue. She had knelt quite as devoutly before 
 the Greek cross in the Kremlin, had bowed low 
 in the mosque of Omar, and had crossed herself 
 reverently in St. Peter s ; for she loved all peo 
 ples, and she pitied all peoples in all their pitiful 
 forms of idolatry. 
 
 Her heart was almost broken here, this first 
 morning of her arrival at the city of David and 
 Solomon. For here, in the very dust and ashes 
 of the Temple, she saw the same old hates, 
 enmities, jealousies, narrowness, and uncleanli- 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 ness of soul and of body ; narrow and unclean as 
 the little gate through which her people crowded. 
 
 What had two thousand years done for God s 
 people ? They had not been borne forward at 
 all. The world, Pagan, Christian, Jew, under 
 the old system of selfish money-getting, place 
 and power-seeking, was still the same. The 
 old order of things had been on trial, in all climes 
 and under all conditions, for years and years, and 
 what was the result ? Sorrow, suicide, despair. 
 Man stood staring on before him, even in the 
 most civilized places and under the most favor 
 able conditions, and kept asking, " Is life worth 
 living ? " 
 
 " God in heaven ! " she cried ; " with all this 
 glory of sky and earth, the sweet air, the flowers 
 and birds, our boundless capacity for enjoyment, 
 shall the world still be joyless ? Why, every 
 breath, even to the most wretched, should be to 
 Him as a benediction. Yes," she continued very 
 seriously, " this old order of things has been on 
 trial long enough ; and if we could and should 
 restore Jerusalem to-day in all her ancient splen 
 dor, what then ? Why, some new Rome would 
 rise to encompass her. There would be born 
 24 
 
"Feed My Sheep 91 
 
 within her walls another Simon and another 
 John, with all their burning hates and jealousies ; 
 and the streets would run with blood the same 
 as two thousand years ago. Then why restore 
 her ? Men would stand on the Temple s porch, 
 as in the high places of London and Paris to-day, 
 and gravely ask, * Is life worth living ? " 
 
 The man, with his hat in his hand and his 
 head bowed, was again before her. He lifted 
 his face slowly to hers. 
 
 "You were pained at what those tourists said?" 
 
 u Those tourists ? I had forgotten them. But 
 I was greatly pained to see these poor people 
 with their burdens, great or small, crowding in 
 such rude competition to the market." 
 
 " c Competition is the life of trade, " he said 
 lightly ; not that he felt that there was any truth 
 or any good of any sort in this old saw, but he 
 said it as all of us who have not considered the 
 sanctity of speech will say silly things. Ah, how 
 much wiser we should all be were we dumb as 
 beasts, or, at least, as silent ! 
 
 In a moment the flashing of her dark eyes told 
 him he had not said quite what he should have said. 
 
 " 4 Competition the life of trade ! " she began, 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 as if to herself. u These old sayings are more 
 than millstones about the neck of this world. 
 Trade ! what is trade ? No wonder that the 
 English gentlemen centuries ago forbade those in 
 trade to sit at their tables or to come into the 
 presence of their king. Not one of the million 
 tradesmen ever grew one grain of corn, or fed so 
 much as one little bird. They battle to the death 
 among themselves in this competition of trade ; 
 ninety in every hundred fall on this field of com 
 petition ; they sacrifice time, truth, honor, energy, 
 life itself, in competition for the robbery of the 
 people. This very competition makes them 
 hard, heartless to one another. They should, in 
 very defence of themselves, be forbidden this 
 fatal competition, destroying their souls and their 
 bodies together." 
 
 The man caught in his breath. He raised his 
 two hands, came up and threw both out to her 
 heartily. She did not misunderstand. She grasped 
 his two hands as earnestly as he extended them. 
 The world is round, and he came into her life as a 
 stately ship enters a harbor after circling the 
 earth. 
 
 Who was he ? It hardly matters. The future 
 26 
 
"Feed My Sheep" 
 
 of our story and of this man is not behind us. 
 Enough to say that he had been born near the 
 banks of a great river in the far-away new world, 
 nearly half a century before. And this meant 
 that he had met and walked with poverty and 
 peril in the wilderness. 
 
 Faint and dubious was the light that fell across 
 the path of anyone born of his period and station 
 there. Gentleness was not encouraged. Man 
 grappled with man and contended from the time 
 when he left the cradle till he reached the grave. 
 Cabin homes under the beech and maple trees, 
 that ought to have been Edens, were often homes 
 of enmity, bitterness, and continual unhappiness. 
 Neighbor was often arrayed against neighbor. 
 Bitter family fueds grew out of the most trivial 
 matters, and the nearest neighbors were often 
 the bitterest enemies. True, they would meet 
 now and then at the little church, but would 
 scarcely speak one to another. They would 
 meet sometimes in the graveyard, drop tears in 
 the grave together, as they covered up their dead, 
 and then go away. Let the truth be told. Let 
 romance picture no road of roses here. All men 
 were unhappy, miserably unhappy here. Their 
 27 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 feuds often ended in battles to the death, as in 
 Kentucky to this day. 
 
 And was this the fault of the good God ? 
 Not so. Plenty there was, abundance after its 
 kind, for all. Wild game, wild fruits, wild nuts, 
 and in abundance, and to be had for the taking ! 
 and yet man oftentimes went hunting for man 
 as for a wild beast. This wretched hatred of 
 man toward man, this continual unhappiness, 
 was so conspicuous on every hand that this man, 
 even in his childhood, had noted it. 
 
 When travel came with time, and carried him 
 far and wide and up from the cabin door to the 
 castle hall, all the way, and at all times, and 
 under all circumstances and all conditions, he 
 found his fellow-men continually unhappy. The 
 king on his throne he found as full of rivalry and 
 contention as the pioneer in his cabin. 
 
 And he found that all history, sacred and pro 
 fane, rose up and testified, from King David 
 down, that u All is vanity and vexation of 
 spirit." 
 
 And he read that one mighty in power and opu 
 lence had cut upon a column of granite in the 
 four corners of his kingdom, ages ago, this fear- 
 28 
 
"Feed My Sheep" 
 
 ful confession : " Eat, drink, and love. The rest 
 is not worth a fillip." 
 
 Traveling in Persia, our searcher for happy 
 people had picked up a tradition which read thus: 
 " Send forth, O King ! search and find a happy 
 man. Take that man s shirt and wear it, and 
 thou, too, shalt be happy." 
 
 And the king sent forth men, and they searched, 
 and they searched throughout the four corners of 
 his kingdom. And in the third year, as they came 
 down a pleasant mountain pass where water 
 flowed by the mouth of a cave half hidden in 
 laden vines, they saw a man playing joyously on 
 his pipe. 
 
 " You seem happy ! " 
 
 " Happy ! I am happy. The sun is warm, 
 the grapes are sweet, and God is good. Oh, yes, 
 I am very, very happy." 
 
 u Then come, come with us. Your fortune is 
 made, our fortunes are made ! Come, rise up 
 and go with us." 
 
 " And where shall I go, my good masters ? " 
 
 " Why, go with us to the palace of the king, 
 and the king will give you the fortune of a 
 prince." 
 
 29 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " And what shall I give the king in return for 
 all this, my good masters ? " 
 
 " Nothing, nothing at all except the shirt you 
 wear." 
 
 " Ah, my good masters, I was never bothered 
 with a shirt." 
 
 So saying, he threw aside the sheepskin that 
 hung about his shoulders, and dropping his lips 
 to his pipe, played pleasantly as the weary men 
 on their weary camels rode wearily on in this 
 hopeless search. 
 
 Yes, here was a happy man, but of what man 
 ner ? He was not a man in the true sense of the 
 word. He was more nearly a domestic and kindly 
 beast. His negative happiness was surely not the 
 sort of happiness to which man made in the 
 image of God was destined. 
 
 Should a bestial king perpetuate to all posterity 
 the outrageous declaration on his columns of 
 granite and brass that there is nothing better in 
 life than to " eat, drink, and be merry " ? 
 
 Even were there a grain of truth in his folly, 
 
 any man with a heart in him would be made 
 
 miserable all the time when sober enough to reflect 
 
 how many, or rather how few, how very, very few 
 
 30 
 
"Feed My Sheep 9 
 
 could, under such a condition of things, be al 
 lowed to " eat, drink, and love." 
 
 What wonder, then, that this stranger threw 
 out his two hands to this brave and beautiful 
 woman who stood there on the ruins of Solomon s 
 Temple, lamenting the enmities and hates and 
 common misery of the human race ! 
 
///. "TAe Time is Fulfilled, and the 
 Kingdom of God is at Hand" 
 
 UNDER THE SYRIAN STARS. 
 
 DEAR Bethlehem, the proud repose 
 
 Of conscious worthiness is thine. 
 Rest on. The Arab comes and goes, 
 
 But farthest Saxon holds thy shrine 
 More sacred in his stouter Christian hold 
 Than England s heaped-up iron house of gold. 
 
 Thy stony hill is heaven s stair 5 
 
 Thine every stone some storied gem. 
 
 Oh, thou art fair and very fair, 
 Thou holy, holy Bethlehem ! 
 
 Thy very dust more dear than dust of gold 
 
 Against my glorious sunset waters rolled. 
 
 And here did glean the lowly Ruth ; 
 
 Here strode her grandson, fierce and fair, 
 Strode forth in all his kingly youth 
 
 And tore the ravening she-bear. 
 Here Rachel sleeps. Here David, thirsting, cried 
 For just one drop from yonder trickling tide. 
 
 ONE night this man and woman walked 
 together in the Garden of Gethsemane 
 under the Syrian stars, and she said, in the same 
 sad, far-away voice : 
 
 11 That strong man who carried the dove should 
 have carried the old woman s wood. She should 
 3* 
 
"The Time is Fulfilled" 
 
 have remained at home, or, if she desired, should 
 have been carried in a cart, sitting on her burthen 
 and resting from the gathering of it, looking about 
 her at the flowers and the birds, or above her at 
 these wondrously beautiful blue skies of Syria." 
 
 " That is a great truth," he cried ; " and I 
 would joy in being a missionary in the cause of 
 that truth ; but what are we to do when every 
 man, from the throne down, must have his own 
 selfish way, except when forced to submit ? " 
 
 He leaned his head to hear what she might say. 
 Possibly her thought was in line with his own plan 
 for the redemption of man from man. As they 
 passed on under an ancient olive-tree she began 
 slowly : 
 
 " Let us be very practical. The salvation of 
 the world now depends on a little hard, sound 
 sense only. It has been going around and around 
 and around, like a little whirling, merry-go-round 
 with helpless and heedless children, till its head 
 has grown dizzy. We have costly churches here 
 and costly cathedrals there, of every nation and 
 of every name ; enough to buy horses, ploughs, 
 carriages, all things needed for all who need 
 them. We claim to build those temples for the 
 
 3 33 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 people ; yet the people are broken in body and in 
 spirit. Some of them will sleep in the streets 
 and alleys to-night, while every church and tem 
 ple stands empty and bolted against God s poor. 
 The rich must have a place where they can come 
 and find God now and then ; and so God s houses 
 are bolted and barred, while God s poor sleep in 
 the rain and frost before the bolted doors." 
 
 The man looked away from the Mount of 
 Olives. He began to wonder whether the great, 
 big world, after its cruel fashion, would be pleased 
 to brand this woman as a nihilist, or a communist. 
 Finally he said : 
 
 " Surely we are in the wilderness ; but is there 
 any way out ? " 
 
 "There is a column of cloud by day and a 
 pillar of fire by night. Look back, back even 
 beyond Exodus, back to the first cry and con 
 fession of sin from man to his Maker. The 
 woman tempted me and I did eat/ And she 
 the serpent tempted her. And behold ! when your 
 Christ prayed he prayed this one prayer, after the 
 prayer for bread and for forgiveness : Lead us 
 not into temptation ! " 
 
 " I see, I see," he said ; " it is plain indeed. 
 34 
 
"TAe Time is Fulfilled" 
 
 You would not have the man tempted to crowd 
 past the old woman with the load on her back in 
 his haste to be first at the market. You would 
 not let the poor, bent body be tempted to give 
 the price of her load to sustain her broken body. 
 You would not open the houses of dissipation to 
 the poor at night, and at the same time lock the 
 doors of God s house." 
 
 The woman s face took on a new and glorious 
 light. 
 
 " Man is good," she began ; " man is almost 
 entirely good. Yet if he was tempted to be bad 
 in Eden where all was so perfect and lovely, how 
 shall we dare hope he will not fall in the terrible 
 trials with which he is so continually beset 
 to-day ? " 
 
 " There seems to me but one thing to do : 
 Pray the prayer and live the prayer of Jesus 
 Christ, l Lead us not into temptation, " said the 
 man earnestly, with bowed head. 
 
 " Ay, then," said the woman at his side, " then 
 we shall see the cloud of smoke by day, after we 
 have followed the pillar of fire in the darkness ; 
 and we can then read, and can then comprehend 
 these other words of Jesus Christ : The time is 
 35 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. 
 " Yes, yes," he murmured to himself; and yet 
 he feared that all this would melt and fade away, 
 as had melted and faded out of sight so many 
 theories and pretty sermons to which he had 
 listened for years. It all seemed too bright and 
 beautiful to be true. But that plan of hers to 
 buy a cart for the old woman to ride in, on her 
 load of wood, was not the plan of a theorist. Let 
 many churches be sold, since they are so rarely 
 in use, and then many old women with bent backs 
 could have carts to ride in. Carry the idea on 
 and on and on ; and then no one could jostle 
 any one at all. The temptation to jostle an old 
 woman with a load of wood on her back would 
 be removed. 
 
 u Let this idea enter all departments of life. 
 Let it be possible for all to ride. Let every man 
 be a king, and there will be no contention for 
 thrones," urged the woman, earnestly, as she saw 
 that her listener was intensely interested. u Lis 
 ten to me. God is the great emancipator of man ; 
 not Lincoln, not the Czar. God has written the 
 emancipation proclamation of man in lightning 
 on the walls of heaven. A message that con- 
 36 
 
"TAe Time is Fulfilled" 
 
 sumed half a year a little time ago is now deliv 
 ered in an hour. A single hand on an engine will 
 give out in a day garments that cost a thousand 
 hands a year to fashion half a century back. 
 And so with bread, with houses, with all things. 
 God has emancipated man, I say, but man still 
 enthralls man." 
 
 They had slowly descended, and walked toward 
 the city. It is all plain, this which we offer you 
 here. The way by which we set out to lead up 
 out of Egypt may appear to you a desert course ; 
 it may seem tortuous, may look to you like the 
 contortions of a serpent, of the brazen serpent 
 for the fainting people to look upon ; but bear in 
 mind we, the human race, are in the wilderness. 
 Faith must be put to the test, and it may be forty 
 years before we look down into the promised land. 
 It may be that none of us shall live to enter 
 there. But that makes the exodus none the less 
 a religious duty. You and you and you may turn 
 back to the flesh-pots of Egypt ; the writer may 
 perish in the wilderness and no man know his 
 burial-place ; but that shall make the truth none 
 the less truth as the centuries roll forward. 
 
 37 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 As they stood in the serene starlight before the 
 low white door of the little hotel, the woman 
 reached the man her hand to say good-by and let 
 him go his way j then she said slowly : 
 
 " The kingdom of heaven is at hand when 
 temptation is not at hand. And this is the whole 
 story, as briefly as it can be stated. In this 
 search for the highway of happiness for man I 
 did not at once decide that all men are good at 
 heart," she said. " In the course of my hard life 
 I have found so many sad exceptions to this gen 
 eral rule that it seemed impossible to accept it. 
 But that one piteous little sentence which is indeed 
 the substance of the prayer of Jesus Christ, 
 Lead us not into temptation, seemed so full 
 of confession that the conviction gradually fast 
 ened itself upon me that all men are at least try 
 ing to be good. If the prayer had read, 4 Make 
 us strong against temptation ; if the prayer had 
 said, Be with us in the hour of temptation 
 but the confession, Lead us not into temptation, 
 or we shall surely fall, includes all men and all 
 that is in man. A penny may be a temptation 
 to one, a kingdom to another ; and so c Lead us 
 not into temptation. Stop and consider a moment 
 38 
 
"The Time is Fulfilled" 
 
 how unequal are all men and how unequal are 
 our human laws. Some of us are strong, so 
 strong that ordinary things are not temptation ; 
 but a poor wretch bearing a load of sticks on her 
 back comes by, is weary, tempted to drink, and 
 falls. And we who are above the little thing that 
 tempted her turn and take God s sunlight out of 
 her eyes for days together. Better take tempta 
 tion out of her way ; for God made her, and she 
 is good, whatever man may make her. Whoever 
 she may be, she is God s, and she is sacred, 
 wherever she may be." 
 
 Pausing a time, she lifted her face and said 
 earnestly : " Read attentively the very first chap 
 ter of the Bible, and God saw that it was good/ 
 Time after time is this repeated : c And God saw 
 that it was good. And God saw everything that 
 he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And 
 yet man dares say by word and deed continually 
 that it is not good. Why, even the wild beasts 
 are good. The fiercest lion of the desert is 
 bravely good." 
 
 For an instant, as she ceased to speak, her 
 lifted face had all the awful splendor of a lioness 
 aroused. 
 
 39 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 She suddenly again gave him her hand and 
 went hastily in at the low, white door. He stood 
 alone, looking after her for a long time, and then 
 went his way, a truer man and a better man by 
 a great deal than he had ever been before. 
 
 The stars were shining through his inmost soul; 
 for he loved her so. Loved her! He deified her. 
 Beautiful as was her face and form, her beauty 
 of soul, her unselfish sincerity and devotion to the 
 cause of humanity made her his angel, his ideal. 
 
 He had hated, or at least feared and avoided 
 women up to the time when he met her. Now 
 a woman was his whole world. She was his 
 earth and his heaven. 
 
IV. The Growing of a Soul 
 
 HIAR ye this parable. A man 
 
 Did plant a garden. Vine and tree 
 
 Alike, in course of time, began 
 To put forth fair and pleasantly. 
 
 The rains of heaven, the persuading sun 
 
 Came down alike on each and every one. 
 
 Yet some trees wilful grew, and some 
 Strong vines grew gayly in the sun, 
 
 With gaudy leaves that ever come 
 
 To naught. And yet, each flaunting one 
 
 Did flourish on triumphantly and glow 
 
 Like sunset clouds in all their moving show. 
 
 But lo ! the harvest found them not. 
 
 The soul had perished from them. Mould 
 And muck and leaf lay there to rot, 
 
 And furnish nourishment untold 
 To patient tree and lowly creeping vine 
 That grew as grew the Husbandman s design. 
 
 Hear then this lesson ; hear and heed. 
 
 I say that chaff shall perish ; say 
 Man s soul is like unto a seed 
 
 To grow unto the Judgment Day. 
 It grows and grows if he will have it grow ; 
 It perishes if he must have it so. 
 
 THIS man had seen the world, all the 
 civilized world, and more of the savage 
 world also than many. For years he had traveled 
 
 41 
 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 continually, traveled in a quiet way, keeping al 
 ways among the poor and toiling. He wrote, 
 taught, toiled with his hands, turned his hand to 
 what he could, but all the time remained with 
 his peers, the poor ; not the low, mind you. Now 
 and then he happened to write something that 
 attracted the attention of the thinkers ; and then 
 some strong hands would reach out and lift him 
 up into the great white light that beats upon 
 thrones. But he was glad always to get down 
 and out of it all, to get back to his peers, the 
 poor ; for there was work to do. 
 
 It had begun to appear to him as hardly fair 
 that the man who laid the brick and mortar and 
 made the great sewers through the mud and 
 malaria of Paris and London and such like cities 
 should not be able to eat meat more than twice 
 each week without robbing his children, while the 
 man who did no work at all, but walked about 
 with his face held high in the sweet air, should 
 have meat and wine twice each day ; ay, many 
 kinds of meat and wine if he so desired. 
 
 He said one day to one of these men down 
 there in a deep sewer, as he leaned over and bade 
 him look up : " Why do not you men unite and 
 
The Growing of a Soul 
 
 build a city of your own ? Go to America, go 
 away out in the unsettled deserts of Arizona or 
 Mexico, find a warm, beautiful spot, plant vines, 
 build a city, and have peace and plenty all your 
 own." 
 
 The man shook his head slowly, and finally 
 said : " No ; we built Paris and we are going to 
 burn Paris, and then have peace and plenty 
 here." 
 
 This was a few months before the Commune. 
 
 Now the burning of Paris was not so much, 
 not so much in comparison with the deep and 
 terrible hate in the heart of that man. Man can 
 easily make a city, but it takes God to make a 
 man. And it takes even God generations upon 
 generations, under His own laws, to build up a 
 single manly, sweet-souled human man out of 
 such hardened and bitter material as that. 
 
 Here is what the woman whom he met in 
 Jerusalem wrote to him, soon after they first met 
 as described, on the subject of city building : 
 
 u The flow of population is steadily to the great 
 centers of the earth. This cannot be stopped or 
 stayed. The people are pouring into the cities. 
 The only thing to be done is to make the cities 
 
 43 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 fit for their reception. There is not to-day one 
 farm-house in all Russia or France. A new order 
 of things has come upon cities and villages, and 
 the man who loves his fellow-men must now 
 meet this new order of things like a practical man. 
 
 " The man who lives for himself only lives 
 for a very small man. 
 
 41 Man should lay the foundation stones of his 
 city where God has laid them. Why will he not 
 choose the beautiful mountain slopes of America, 
 instead of the marshes of Liverpool, the mud of 
 London, or the malaria-reeking ruins of Rome ? 
 Is it because he has not hope, heart unity, 
 strength ? 
 
 "Well, then, since these workers, these world- 
 builders, have not these qualities, let those who 
 love the world go forth, find sunny slopes and 
 natural hills of health, and there, with God to 
 help them, lay the corner-stones of the new 
 cities under this new order of things, for these 
 new people who so persistently and so helplessly 
 pour into the cities. 
 
 " Man must be saved from man. Jesus Christ 
 lived and died to save man ; to save man from man, 
 not man from God ; to save man from himself 
 44 
 
The Growing of a Soul 
 
 by His example of patient pity and forgiveness 
 and the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 " Is man an antediluvian monster, that he 
 shall for all time wallow in the mud and mire of 
 some old seaport ? Is man a beast, that he 
 should be led along forever with blinds before 
 his eyes for fear that he may see the light and 
 run away ? 
 
 " Let us go forth and build a city where there 
 are roomy, sunlit, untrod mountain-sides ; build 
 it on the beautiful foundation stones that God 
 has laid with his own hand ; and let us lay the 
 moral and social foundations on the sacred and 
 immortal precepts of the Sermon on the Mount ; 
 build in Faith and Hope and Charity, and leave 
 the rest to Time, to God s first-born. 
 
 u No, you should not compel men to believe 
 that Christ died to save man from God. Let 
 all believe as God has given us to believe, as to 
 whether Christ died to save man from man or to 
 save man from God. Nor should you insist 
 that Christ is the only begotten Son of God. 
 This has been argued by sword and pen, till every 
 venerable city that was ever founded has been 
 drenched in blood and tears. Only let each man 
 45 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 try to believe in man and obey the precepts of 
 the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 u The good God made us all very beautiful 
 in soul and body to begin with ; and very, very 
 happy too ; therefore we know that He desires 
 us to be continually happy and continually beau 
 tiful. And if we are not continually happy and 
 continually beautiful is it the fault of God or 
 the fault of man ? 
 
 u Indisputably it is entirely the fault of man. 
 Let us then see that man be made less miserable. 
 Let us look less dogmatically after God, who 
 can well afford to pity us for our wrongs to His 
 beautiful image. And now let us go forth with 
 the Sermon on the Mount in hand and build the 
 City Beautiful ; and as we go forth on this mis 
 sion, as good men go to far countries and lay 
 down their lives in dark lands, let us ponder on 
 His words for the poor and oppressed : Peter, 
 feed my sheep. 
 
 These few quotations will show you more of 
 the soul and character and lofty purpose of this 
 woman than would a dozen chapters of ours. 
 
 It would be idle to record his replies to these 
 sincere appeals for man. Like a strong swim- 
 4 6 
 
The Growing of a Soul 
 
 mer, borne forward by a mountain torrent, he 
 was entirely at her will. He asked nothing 
 more, nothing better or higher, only to help 
 her help man ; that was all in all to him. 
 
 How he worshiped her ! And yet she ever 
 seemed so far away. Once he dared to take her 
 hand. She did not reprove him ; she did not 
 withdraw it, but he felt no response, such as he 
 hoped as some reward for his daring. What 
 did her passive serenity mean ? 
 
 47 
 
V. How Beautiful ! 
 
 "How BEAUTIFUL are the feet of them that preach 
 the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things ! " 
 
 star-built bridge, broad milky way ! 
 O star-lit, stately, splendid span ! 
 
 If but one star should cease to stay 
 
 And prop its shoulders to God s plan 
 The man who lives for self, I say, 
 He lives for neither God nor man. 
 
 1 count the columned waves at war 
 
 With Titan elements 5 and they, 
 In martial splendor, storm the bar 
 
 And shake the world, these bits of spray. 
 Each gives to each, and like the star 
 Gets back its gift in tenfold pay. 
 
 To get and give and give amain 
 
 The rivers run and oceans roll. 
 O generous and high-born rain 
 
 When reigning as a splendid whole ! 
 That man who lives for self alone 
 Lives for the meanest mortal known. 
 
 WE HAVE spoken of Miriam as a silent 
 woman, for she really seemed silent 
 at all times. She was, in fact, spoken of by 
 all who knew her in London as the silent 
 woman. And yet it will be seen that she 
 said much. It may be that it is the man or 
 4 8 
 
How Beautiful ! 
 
 woman who says nothing who is a great talker. 
 
 Socrates was a strangely silent man in his 
 younger days, so far as we can find out ; and yet 
 he really said more than all the men and women 
 of his century. 
 
 Jesus Christ was sad and silent at all times ; 
 and yet the things he said and suggested fill more 
 books and find place in the hearts of more good 
 people than the sayings of all the great men of 
 earth put together. 
 
 Beauty, beauty of body and soul, was her idol. 
 She kept the following lines from the Bible con 
 stantly before her : 
 
 " Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, 
 comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with 
 banners." 
 
 And here is another line she loved to repeat : 
 
 "He hath made every thing beautiful in his 
 time." 
 
 Here follow some extracts from an epistle 
 to Sir Moses Montefiore on his hundredth 
 birthday : 
 
 " All things are beautiful. All animate life is won- 
 drously beautiful. You are beautiful j you were born 
 beautiful, beautiful in body as in soulj beautiful with 
 
 4 49 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 the divine beauty and image of the Eternal. If this 
 beauty of man shall be marred or scarred it will be the 
 fault of man, not of his Maker. Time shall not touch 
 nor tarnish man s beauty ; man, only, can lay hand upon 
 it. Man alone may make this beauty of body and of 
 soul less perfectly beautiful than God made it. 
 
 "It is a crime to make this beauty less beautiful. It 
 is a duty to make this beauty daily more beautiful, 
 man s duty to himself, man s duty to his Maker, man s 
 duty to man. It is man s duty to make his youth sweetly 
 beautiful; it is man s duty to make his meridian of life 
 magnificently beautiful; it is man s sacred duty to make 
 his declining years, like your own, so serenely beautiful 
 that man shall be in love with old age, to be so tran 
 quil, so perfectly at peace, so beautiful in body and in 
 soul a stately tree, Elijah s chariot of fire in the golden 
 autumn that men shall see a halo of light above the 
 good, gray head as it goes down in the twilight to the 
 River of Rest. 
 
 "<Ah, no, impossible! sighs one; <I cannot grow 
 more beautiful daily, for I am daily trodden into the dust. 
 I cannot even retain the beauty of body and of soul which 
 God gave me to begin with. 
 
 " I answer, look about you at the down-trodden grass. 
 Resurgam ! Resurgam ! Look above you at the busy 
 clouds, the battling elements. There is not so very much 
 rest anywhere, but there is beauty everywhere. Ay, I 
 look down to the grass under my feet. The grass is daily 
 trodden down, and yet it daily, hourly, tries to rise up, 
 
 5 
 
How Beautiful ! 
 
 to grow and grow and be more beautiful even with its 
 face in the dust. And when the storm comes it washes 
 its face in the rain and rises up and again goes forward in 
 its patient effort to make its one little place in man s path 
 way still more beautiful. 
 
 "Yes, it is to be conceded that there is not much rest 
 for any one of us or for anything. All things toil. The 
 oceans are busy building their sea-banks of shell and 
 shale and snow-white sand and pretty, rounded pebbles. 
 The flowers toil, the trees toil and toil and are often 
 broken in mighty battles with the elements. All things 
 toil and toil continually to make this beautiful world still 
 more beautiful. And God himself, so far as we can find 
 out, is the hardest toiler of all. 
 
 "The thing to do is to toil harmoniously. Put the 
 working world in harmony, and then work is rest. It is 
 for this purpose, the purpose of possibly helping along 
 in the line of harmony, that these thoughts, set down 
 in the intervals of travel and toil of supervising, here 
 in Palestine, the ploughing and planting, sowing grain 
 or gathering fruit it is in the hope of harmonizing 
 and, maybe, the lighting of a lamp in one or two of 
 the darker passes of life, as the peasants of Russia light 
 lamps before the image of the Virgin in the dangerous 
 passes of mountains, that I continually invoke the adora 
 tion of beauty. 
 
 "Meantime there is good reason for hope; for the 
 world grows better, brighter, and more beautiful, vastly 
 more beautiful year by year. So beautiful, indeed, has 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 the world become that it almost seems that if man could 
 only harmonize his forces, harmonize himself, with his 
 surroundings, harmonize himself with himself, he could 
 reach forth and say truly : The kingdom of heaven is 
 at hand. 
 
 " But, alas ! we are a lot of garrulous children in a great, 
 big boat in a great, big bay ; and some row east and some 
 row west, and some will not row at all, but live and 
 thrive on the fears and misery and the despair of the 
 weaker ones." 
 
VI. The Sermon on the Mount 
 
 I THINK the birds in that far dawn 
 
 Were still. The bustling town below 
 Lay listening. Its strength was drawn 
 To him, as tides that inward flow. 
 
 All Galilee lay still. Far fields of corn 
 Lay still to hear that silent, sacred morn. 
 
 Be comforted ; and blessed be 
 
 The meek, the merciful, the pure 
 Of heart ; for they shall see, shall hear 
 God s mercy. So shall peace endure 
 
 With God s peacemakers. They are His, and they 
 Shall be His children in the Judgment Day. 
 
 THE great philanthropist had returned to 
 London, leaving our two younger philan 
 thropists and city-builders together in Jerusalem. 
 These two persons were together now almost 
 entirely. They were absolute masters of their 
 own time and work. They were under no legal 
 obligation to any one. But what of that broader 
 and far more binding moral obligation to man 
 which goes with every gift of mental strength ? 
 Being entirely released from all further care in 
 Jerusalem, because the colonies in and round 
 about the ancient cities had been trained, 
 53 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 according to the wish of their founder, to 
 lean on themselves, Miriam now began to 
 look abroad. 
 
 As said before, she was far from satisfied that 
 the best thing that could be done had been done 
 here. It seemed to her like the same old story of 
 going around and around and around ; and she 
 could not help seeing that every new generation 
 would need a new Savior and a new Sermon on 
 the Mount. The same old enmities, the same 
 old sorrows, and the same old sins. 
 
 There was a colony of Christians down by 
 the sea, not far from Joppa. The two city-build 
 ers went thither to see, to listen, and, if possible, 
 to learn. 
 
 They found that these colonists had come to 
 the Holy Land to pray and to await the coming 
 of Christ. Their devout lives, their humility and 
 continual habit of prayer appealed to the man 
 greatly. But as for the woman, she had no 
 patience with them. 
 
 " They should have gone to work in their own 
 land, where God first set them down in the battle 
 of life, and Christ would have been with them 
 there as well as here," she said. 
 54 
 
The Sermon on the Mount 
 
 " Why, how selfish ! " she continued. " These 
 few came here to await the second coming of 
 Christ ; as if they would be first to get into 
 heaven." 
 
 " But they are so very devout." 
 
 " Yes, they prayed for rain all day and nearly 
 all night last week, I am told ; for their corn was 
 being consumed by the fervor of the sun." 
 
 " And was not that a fine example of faith ? " 
 
 " It was a fine example of folly, like all such 
 prayers, and an exhibition of supreme selfishness. 
 Why, they appealed to God to change a law of 
 nature. They cried out to God all day and all 
 night to send rain, and ruin all the figs of Smyrna, 
 in order that they might have a dozen bags of 
 corn ! They simply prayed God to ruin fifty 
 thousand people in order that fifty might have a 
 little green corn to eat ! Selfishness like that 
 cannot survive, and it should not." 
 
 He had never before seen her out of patience 
 so entirely. It was evident that her plans for the 
 salvation of the world, whatever they were, lay 
 in line with the laws of nature. He began to 
 learn that this boundless faith of hers was trav 
 eling hand in hand with reason. For while he, 
 55 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 for his part, gave this colony of Christians all 
 possible encouragement, and also a little solid 
 assistance to help tide them through the trouble 
 that was upon them because of the failure of 
 corn, she gave neither consolation nor money. 
 But instead, she gave the leader a letter to the 
 British and American consuls, and directed him 
 how to proceed to get his people home at her 
 cost. 
 
 Half a year after the long prayer for rain, this 
 colony, a sort of prayerful Brook Farm, was 
 added to the list of similar failures, and the marsh 
 grass now grows where the really devout and 
 moral little community could not make corn to 
 grow with all their prayers. 
 
 It is needless to say that this object-lesson in 
 city-building here in the Holy Land was a sad 
 discouragement to this man. Whatever her 
 plans were, he, for his part, had planned some 
 thing not very different from this. Only, he had 
 not contemplated the turning back of man in his 
 journey around the globe. He believed rather 
 that all men should remain as nearly as possible 
 at home, and begin the great reform in their own 
 dooryard. 
 
 56 
 
The Sermon on the Mount 
 
 " Neither will that do," she said emphatically, 
 as they sat by the Virgin s Fountain at Nazareth, 
 whither they had gone as winter came on, and 
 where they discussed this greatest problem of 
 humanity. 
 
 " A well must be dug in the desert, and a 
 great protecting tree be planted there. Of 
 course, any good man will do his best ; his 
 hearthstone will be a holy altar on which he will 
 lay his toil and example and life, and good chil 
 dren will grow from his good deeds. But a 
 Jacob must rise up to dig a well by the way, 
 and a Moses must come to lead up and out from 
 the bondage of getting and getting and getting. 
 There must be some great central beginning ; 
 and it must be removed, it must be remote from 
 all these cruel and hard traditions of trade till, 
 like a child, it has at least learned to stand alone. 
 For, although the new-born city might be a Her 
 cules at its birth, there would come, not only 
 two serpents, but twenty serpents, to strangle it 
 in its cradle." 
 
 This, the foregoing, is what she said one twi 
 light as they sat on the now grass-grown escarp 
 ment of the hill above the holy little city, and in 
 57 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 answer to his hint that they should build the City 
 Beautiful there where they would have slain the 
 Christ. And she said it so severely ! She was 
 almost cruel in her putting aside of his senti 
 mental plans. Do or say what he could she 
 seemed to grow further away from him day by 
 day ; and his earnest, honest heart was breaking 
 for just one word. Was he so entirely of earth, 
 or was it that she was so entirely of heaven, that 
 he had not yet dared a second time to touch her 
 hand ? 
 
VII. In the Sweat of Thy Face 
 
 WHAT sound was that ? A pheasant s whir ? 
 
 What stroke was that ? Lean low thine ear. 
 Is that the stroke of Carpenter, 
 
 That far, faint echo that we hear ? 
 Is that the sound that sometime Bedouins tell 
 Of hammer-stroke as from His hand it fell ? 
 
 It is the stroke of Carpenter, 
 
 Through nineteen hundred years and more 
 
 Still sounding down the hallowed stir 
 Of patient toil ; as when He wore 
 
 The leathern dress, the echo of a sound 
 
 That thrills for aye the toiling, sensate ground. 
 
 Hear Mary weaving ? Listen ! Hear 
 
 The thud of loom at weaving-time 
 In Nazareth. I wreathe this dear 
 
 Tradition with my lowly rhyme. 
 Believing everywhere that she may hear 
 The sound of toil, sweet Mary bends an ear. 
 
 Yea, this the toil that Jesus knew ; 
 
 Yet we complain if we must bear. 
 Are we more dear ? Are we more true ? 
 
 Give us, O God, and do not spare ! 
 Give us to bear as Christ and Mary bore 
 With toil by leaf-girt Nazareth of yore ! 
 
 THESE rhymes tell in a crude way a pretty 
 tradition of toil. It is the dove perhaps, 
 the wood-dove, which the half-wild sons of deso 
 lation and the desert have heard j for Nazareth 
 59 
 
"The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 is still the city of woods. The very name meant 
 woods. Even now, as in the time of Jesus 
 Christ, people of the cities are saying : " Can any 
 good thing come out of the woods the West?" 
 
 To recount the plans of these two city-build 
 ers, here where Christ toiled, taught in the syn 
 agogue, and was dragged to the hill-top to be 
 hurled down, would take long indeed. Let it be 
 enough to say that they were seeking for light. 
 " Light, more light ! " was their one desire and 
 demand. 
 
 " Life is so short ! " she said one day. u For 
 my part, I cannot afford to make a failure and 
 die. That would be too terrible ! " She paused 
 long, and then with lifted face and clasped hands 
 she said earnestly: " But to make a success, and 
 then die at once ah, that would be joy, 
 joy, joy ! " 
 
 At such times as this she seemed to him to be 
 thousands of miles from his side. It is more than 
 possible that a strong, pure, and complete woman 
 may concentrate her entire soul and body to some 
 high and holy purpose as well without taking either 
 vow or veil as if she took both in due form and 
 solemnity. 
 
 60 
 
In the Sweat of Thy Face 
 
 Leaving Nazareth, they journeyed on down 
 into Egypt, taking the same way, as nearly as 
 possible, as that by which Moses had come when 
 leading his people toward the Holy Land. 
 
 One single incident of this journey, which 
 might well fill a book, must be recorded ; for it 
 not only indicates something of her courage and 
 strength of devotion but also tells something of 
 her strange belief in not only the brotherhood of 
 man but of all animate life. 
 
 They were tented for the night in the desert 
 to the south of Mount Sinai when a lion 
 approached almost to the tent door. As she 
 calmly put her terrified servants behind her and, 
 without a word, stepped between the man and 
 the crouching beast, she looked it firmly in the 
 face and said : 
 
 " Why, do n t you know me ? I remember 
 you, my brother, after all these ages." And she 
 moved forward and would have laid her hand 
 upon the lion s tumbled mane had he not drawn 
 back and away to the somber bosom of his 
 mother, Night. 
 
 " Yes, I seem to remember all this now. I 
 surely saw that lion long, long ago, and loved 
 61 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 him," she said to the man at last, looking out 
 and away to the holy mountain. 
 
 " And you have been here before ? " 
 " Yes, yes, when Moses passed this way, 
 thousands of years back, I was here. I remem 
 ber it all as if it were but yesterday." 
 
 In line with this wonderful mastery of hers 
 over wild beasts, wild men, all things animate 
 or inanimate, let us quote a chapter from the 
 pen of her companion. It might well be called 
 A Study in Yellow. 
 
 " One warm sunset, as the boat lay with 
 its prow in the yellow sand that seemed 
 to stretch away into infinity, she proposed 
 that she and I should ascend to the top of the 
 ruins on a hill a little distance back from the 
 river, and there wait and watch for the coming 
 day. 
 
 " It was a dreadful place. I had walked only a 
 little way out, but on seeing a shriveled black 
 hand stretching up from the sand, I had turned 
 back ; only to stumble over the head of a mummy 
 which I afterward saw one of our servants gather 
 up and take to his Copt camp for firewood. 
 62 
 
In the Sweat of Thy Face 
 
 Still, we had been pent up in the boat much ; 
 and then would not she be with me ? 
 
 " Two Arabs were taken with us to carry a 
 bottle of water and the rugs and robes. The 
 hill was steeper than it at first seemed ; and the 
 ascent through the sand heavy. I was having an 
 opportunity to test her strength and endurance. 
 As we entered between two columns of red gran 
 ite, one of the servants dropped on a knee and 
 spread his hand as wide as he could in the sand. 
 But wide as he spread it, he could not more than 
 half cover the fresh foot-print of a huge lion. 
 
 " The clamber to the top was steep and hard. 
 Yet it was not nearly so steep and hard as I could 
 have wished it, when I reflected that very likely 
 before midnight a lion might pass that way. 
 
 " We found that these wonderful columns 
 were capped with great slabs of granite. These 
 slabs were of astonishing breadth and thick 
 ness. This temple, as it is called, had prob 
 ably been a tomb. I took good care to see that 
 there was no other means of ascent to the place 
 where we had chosen to spend the night than the 
 one by which we had ascended. And I remem 
 ber how eagerly I wished for a crowbar in order 
 63 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 that I might break down a little of the debris, so 
 that the ascent might be less easy for prowling 
 beasts. 
 
 " The sky was rimmed with yellow; a yellow 
 to the east, yellow to the west ; a world of soft 
 and restful yellow that melted away by gradations 
 as the eye ascended from the desert. It was like 
 melody in its serene harmonies and awful glory. 
 
 "And she at my side partook of it all ; she 
 breathed it, absorbed it, literally became a part of 
 it. I saw her grow and glow. Soul and body I 
 saw her dilate and expand till she was in absolute 
 harmony with the golden yellow splendor that 
 encompassed us. I felt that she had been in the 
 midst of, even a part of, this tawny desolation 
 ages and ages before. Perhaps her soul had been 
 born here, born before the pyramids. 
 
 "With my own hands I spread her couch of 
 skins and rugs in the remotest corner of a great 
 stone slab that topped a column, high above the 
 tawny sands of the desert. The night was very 
 sultry, even here on this high and roomy summit. 
 The broad, deep slab of granite was still warm 
 with sunshine gone away, and gave out heat like 
 a dying furnace. The steep and arduous ascent 
 64 
 
In the Sweat of Thy Face 
 
 had taxed her strength, and unloosing her robe as 
 I turned to examine more minutely our strange 
 quarters on the top of this lofty tomb, or temple, 
 she sank to rest, half reclining on her arm, her 
 chin in her upturned palm, her face lifted away 
 toward the rising moon. 
 
 " Half a dozen paces to the right two tall and 
 ponderous columns of granite stood in line with 
 those that supported the great slab on which she 
 rested. Evidently these grand and solitary col 
 umns had also once been topped by granite slabs. 
 But these had fallen to the ground under the 
 leveling feet of many centuries, and now lay 
 almost swallowed up in the sea of yellow sands 
 below. I put out my foot carefully, trying to 
 reach the broad top of the nearest columns of 
 granite, but it was beyond me. Stepping back a 
 couple of paces and quietly removing my boots, 
 I gathered up my strength and made a leap, land 
 ing almost in the center of the column s top. 
 A half-step backward, another leap who could 
 resist the challenge of that lone and kingly col 
 umn that remained ? I landed securely as before, 
 then turned about. Her face had not lifted an 
 instant from the awful majesty of the Orient. 
 
 5 65 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " Slowly, wearily, the immense moon came 
 shouldering up through the seas of yellow sand. 
 
 " These billows of sand seemed to breathe and 
 move. The expiring heat of the departed sun 
 made them scintillate and shimmer in a soft and 
 undulating light. And yet it was not light ; only 
 the lone and solemn ghost of departed day. Yel 
 low and huge and startling stood the moon at last, 
 full grown and fearful in its nearness and immen 
 sity on the topmost lift of yellow sands in the 
 yellow sea before us. Distance seemed to be 
 annihilated. The moon seemed to have forgotten 
 her place and all proportion. Looking down into 
 the yellow Nile, it seemed a bottomless chasm. 
 
 "And it seemed so far away ! And the moon 
 so very near. 
 
 " Silence, desolation, death lay on all things 
 below, about, above. The west was molten yel 
 low gold, faint and fading, it is true : but where 
 the yellow sands left off and the yellow skies 
 began no man could say or guess, save by the 
 yellow stars that studded the west with an inten- 
 sest yellow. 
 
 " Yellow to the right and yellow to the left, 
 yellow overhead and yellow underfoot ; with only 
 66 
 
In the Sweat of Thy Face 
 
 this endless chasm of Erebus cleaving the yellow 
 earth and yellow heavens in halves. 
 
 " After a time and all the world still one sea 
 of softened yellow, torn in two by Charon s 
 chasm of waters I silently leaped back, replaced 
 my boots on my feet and then held my breath. 
 For my servants had beckoned and I had seen, 
 or perhaps felt, an object move on the lifted levels 
 of sand between us and the moon. 
 
 u Cautiously I sank down on my breast and 
 peered low and long up the horizon. I saw, 
 heard nothing. Glancing around to where my 
 companion lay, I saw that she still had not stirred 
 from the half-reclining position she had first taken, 
 with half-lifted face in her upturned palm. 
 
 " Then she had seen nothing, heard nothing. 
 This, however, did not argue much. Her life 
 had not been of the desert. She had spent her 
 years in the study of men and women. I had 
 spent mine with wild beasts. I could trust her 
 to detect motives in men, give the warning note 
 of danger from dangerous men ; but the wild 
 beasts and wilder men of the border were mine 
 to watch and battle with, not hers. 
 
 " She had seen nothing ; evidently she feared 
 67 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 nothing, and so was resting, resting in mind as 
 in body. And as I glanced again over my 
 shoulder and saw how entirely content she 
 seemed, I was glad. Surely she depended 
 entirely on me ; on my watchfulness and my 
 courage. And this made me more watchful and 
 more resolute and stout of heart. A man likes 
 to be trusted. A true man likes a true woman s 
 trust, much indeed. A strong man likes to be 
 leaned upon. It makes him stronger, braver, 
 better. Let women never forget this. Admit 
 that she, too, has her days of strength and endu 
 rance ; and admit that she, too, has her peculiar 
 fortress of strength and courage, and these also 
 man respects and regards with piteous tenderness. 
 But man, incapable of her finer and loftier cour 
 age and endurance, resents her invasion of his 
 prerogative. 
 
 u It is only a womanly man who can really love 
 a manly woman. But to continue : Looking a 
 third time to this woman I saw that she had let 
 her head sink low on her leaning arm. She was 
 surely sleeping. How I liked her trust and her 
 faith in me ! And how I liked her courage, too, 
 and her high quality of endurance. It was her 
 68 
 
In the Sweat of Thy Face 
 
 courage that had brought me up here this night 
 to the contemplation of awful and all-glorious 
 Africa. Silently and without lifting a finger, she 
 had shown me a world of burnished gold. I 
 had surely seen God through her. We stood 
 nearer together now than ever before. This 
 single hour of indescribable glory should forever 
 stand as an altar in the desert. Our souls had 
 melted and flown and tided on, intermingled 
 like molten gold in the golden atmosphere and 
 the yellow scene that wrapped us round about, 
 and no word had been said. When God speaks 
 so audibly, let man be silent. 
 
 u I must have looked on the sleeping and trust 
 ful woman at my side longer than I should, for 
 on turning my eyes again to the horizon, there, 
 distinctly on the yellow sand and under the yel 
 low moon moved, stealthily as a cat, yet graceful 
 and grand, the most kingly beast I ever beheld. 
 He did not look right nor left, but moved along 
 with huge head in the air, slow and stately, and 
 triumphant in his fearful symmetry and strength. 
 
 "As I half arose the lion suddenly halted. He 
 lifted his proud head higher still in the air, and to 
 my consternation half turned about and looked 
 6 9 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 straight in my direction. Then a sidewise and 
 circuitous step or two with his long reach of 
 hinder leg, his wide and deep and flexible flank ; 
 slow and kingly ; splendid to see ! 
 
 " I sank down again, quite willing to let him 
 interview the camp in the black chasm below. 
 They had spears and guns and everything down 
 there, everything but courage to face a lion with ; 
 and I was not going to interfere with a fight which 
 at the first had promised to be entirely their 
 own. 
 
 " But this new movement of mine only accent 
 uated his graceful motion. The head now turned 
 in the air, like the head of a man. I had time 
 to note, and I record it with certainty, that the 
 massive head and the tumbled mane towered 
 straight above the shoulder. In fact, the lower 
 parts of the long mane looked most like the long 
 shaggy beard of a man falling down upon his 
 broad breast. This I noted as he still kept on 
 in his sidewise circuit above us and around us on 
 the yellow sand and under the yellow moon. At 
 times he was almost indistinct. But the carriage 
 of that head ! There was a fine fascination in 
 the lift and the movement and the turn of that 
 70 
 
In the Sweat of Thy Face 
 
 stately head that must ever be remembered, but 
 can never be described. 
 
 "As he came nearer for his sidewise walk was 
 mainly in our direction I saw that he, too, was 
 yellow, as if born of this yellow world in this yel 
 low night; but his was a more ponderous yellow ; 
 the yellow of red and rusty old gold. At times he 
 seemed almost black ; and all the time terrible. 
 
 " In half a minute more he would be too close 
 for comfort, and I decided to arouse my com 
 panion. She wakened fully awake, if I may be 
 allowed to express a fact so awkwardly. You 
 may know that there are people like that. 
 
 " What is it ? 
 
 " C A lion. 
 
 " c Well, there is room for us all. Let us rest. 
 
 " Where ? 
 
 " She had looked and was still looking far out 
 against the yellow horizon where her eyes had 
 rested when she fell asleep. And as she looked, 
 or rather before I ventured to point her to the 
 spot almost under the tomb where the lion strode, 
 he passed on and was by this time perhaps almost 
 quite under the great slab of granite where we 
 rested. 
 
 71 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " I was about to whisper the fact in her ear 
 when I fancied I felt the whole tomb tremble ! 
 Then it seemed to shake, or rather rumble again. 
 Then again it rumbled. Then again ! Then 
 there was a roar that literally shook the sand. I 
 heard the sand sift and rattle down like drops of 
 rain from where it lay in the crevices as I lis 
 tened to find whether or not he was moving for 
 ward toward the place by which we had ascended. 
 He was surely moving forward. I felt rather 
 than heard him move. I assert and I must 
 content myself for the present with merely 
 asserting that you can feel the movements of 
 an animal under such circumstances. And I 
 assert further that an animal, especially a wild 
 beast, can feel your movements under almost any 
 circumstances. The undeveloped senses deserve 
 a book by themselves. 
 
 " Pistol in hand I sprang to the steep and rugged 
 passage. And not a second too soon. His 
 mighty head was almost on a level with the 
 granite slab. And he was half crouching for a 
 bound and a spring upward, which would per 
 haps land him in our faces. I could see or did 
 I feel that his huge hinder feet were spread wide 
 72 
 
In the Sweat of Thy Face 
 
 out and sunken in the sand with preparation to 
 lend all their force toward bearing him upward 
 in one mighty bound. 
 
 u I fired ! fired right into his big, red mouth, 
 between two hideous pickets of ugly, yellowteeth. 
 He fell back, and then, gathering his ferocious 
 strength, he bounded up and forward again ; this 
 time striking his left shoulder heavily against a 
 projecting corner of the granite slab. Fortu 
 nately the ascent was slightly curving, so that 
 the distance could not be made at a single bound 
 without collision. 
 
 "Again the supple and comely beast, disdaining 
 to creep or crawl, made a mighty leap upward. 
 But only to strike the rounding corner of the 
 great granite slab and fall back as before. 
 
 " But I knew he would reach us in time ! And 
 if ever man did wish for fitting arms to fight 
 with and defend woman it was I at that time. 
 True, I had five shots left ; but what were they 
 in the face of this furious king of beasts ? I 
 began to fear that they would only serve to en 
 rage him. 
 
 " Still, he should have all I had to give. Death 
 is, has been, and will be. The best we can 
 
 73 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 make of it all is to try and see that we shall not 
 die ingloriously. 
 
 "The woman had been by my side all this time. 
 And now, as the lion paused as if to gather up the 
 broken thunderbolts of his strength, she laid a 
 hand on my arm, never so gently, and said : 
 c Let me go down and meet him face to face. 
 I think he will not harm me/ 
 
 " c Madam, I exclaimed impetuously, c you 
 will meet him up here, and face to face, soon 
 enough, I think/ 
 
 " No, that will not do. You must trust the 
 lion ; as Daniel did/ 
 
 " I pushed her back, as she tried to pass down, 
 almost violently. 
 
 " c Madam, 5 I cried as I wheeled about and 
 forced her before me, c if you have real courage 
 leap to the head of yonder column, where those 
 servants stand shivering, then on to the next ! 
 Quick ! be brave enough to save yourself! J 
 
 "Another leap of the lion ! Bang! Bang! 
 
 " This time he did not fall back, but held on 
 by sheer force of his powerful arms ; his ter 
 rible claws tearing at the granite slab as they 
 hung and hooked over its outer edge. 
 
 74 
 
In the Sweat of Thy Face 
 
 " Bang ! Bang ! Bang ! The last shot. I 
 hurled my revolver in his face, for he had not 
 flinched or given back a single grain. His 
 breath and my breath were mingled there in the 
 smoke of my pistol. I heard or did I feel 
 his great hinder feet fastening in the steep earth 
 under him for his final struggle to the top ? 
 
 " I turned, saw that she had reluctantly reached 
 the farther column ; and with three leaps and a 
 bound I crossed the granite slabs and stood erect 
 on the nearer one ! Not a moment had I left. 
 The lion, with great noise of claws on the gran 
 ite, came tearing to the surface. I crouched 
 down out of breath on the outer edge of my 
 column, so as to be surely out of reach of his 
 ponderous paws. I expected him to decide the 
 matter at once, to reach us or give it up instantly. 
 But he seemed in no haste now. He scarcely 
 advanced at all, for what seemed to me to be a 
 long time. Finally, jerking his tail like the 
 swift movement of a serpent, he strode along 
 the farthest edge of the granite slab and seemed 
 to take no notice of us whatever. Blood was 
 dripping from his mouth, but he did not seem to 
 heed it. 
 
 75 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " Once more he strode with his old majesty, and 
 seemed ashamed that he should have submitted 
 to the indignity of a struggle to gain the place 
 where he now stood sullen and triumphant. 
 Enraged ? He was choking, dying with rage ; 
 and yet this kingly creature would not even con 
 descend to look in our direction. 
 
 " Why, I could feel his fearful rage as he now 
 walked on and around the edge of that granite 
 slab. At length he came opposite to where I 
 lay crouching on the farther edge of my column. 
 He passed on without so much as turning his 
 eyes in my direction. And yet I felt, I felt and 
 knew, as distinctly as if he could have talked 
 and told me, that he was carefully measuring 
 the distance. 
 
 "When the lion, in his stately round, came to 
 the narrow pass by which he had ascended he 
 paused an instant, and half lowered his head. 
 
 "Ah, how devoutly I did pray that he would 
 be generous enough to descend to the sands and 
 present us with his absence. 
 
 u But no ! Lifting his huge head even higher 
 in the air than before, he now passed on hur 
 riedly, came on around to where he stood with 
 76 
 
In the Sweat of Thy Face 
 
 quivering flank and flashing eye almost within 
 reach of me. Yet he still disdained to even so 
 much as look at me. His head was far above 
 me as I crouched there on the farther edee of 
 
 O 
 
 my column ; his flashing eyes were lifted and 
 looking far above me and beyond me. Maybe 
 he was on the lookout over the desert for the 
 coming of his companion. 
 
 " Soon, however, he set his huge paws on the 
 very edge of the great slab on which he stood, 
 and then suddenly threw his right paw out toward 
 me and against the edge of my column with the 
 force and velocity of a catapult ! 
 
 " I heard the sharp, keen claws strike and 
 scrape on the granite as if they had been hooks 
 of steel. 
 
 " Then he threw himself on his breast, and 
 hitching himself a little to one side, he threw his 
 right paw so far that it landed full in the center 
 of my column s top and tore my coat sleeve. 
 Then he hitched his huge body a little farther 
 on over the edge and again threw his huge paw 
 right at my face. It fell short of its mark only 
 a few inches, as it seemed to me. But, having 
 hastily gathered in my garments, his claws did 
 
 77 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 not find anything to fasten on and they drew 
 back empty. 
 
 "At this point three dusky etchings stood out 
 against the golden east on the yellow sands, and 
 looked intently at us with their enormous heads 
 high in the air. And now the beast slowly arose 
 and moved on. A lion s head seems always dis 
 proportionately large, but when he is exercising 
 for an appetite to eat you it looks large indeed. 
 
 " The monster who was occupying the plat 
 form with us surely saw his followers ; indeed, 
 he must have seen them long before ; but his 
 unbending dignity seemed to forbid that he 
 should take heed of them. 
 
 " The new-born hope that he would descend 
 and join his followers died as he came on around. 
 
 "And now something strange and notable 
 transpired. This one incident is my excuse for 
 thus elaborating this otherwise passive and tedi 
 ously dull sketch of this night. I had risen to 
 my feet, and as the lion came on around, this 
 woman, with a force that was irresistible, sprang 
 to my side, thrust me behind her, and stepping 
 forward with a single spring, she stood on the 
 edge of the column nearest to the lion. 
 78 
 
In the Sweat of Thy Face 
 
 " I would have followed, but that same force, 
 which I can now understand was a mental force 
 and not at all a physical force, held me hard 
 and fast to where I stood. 
 
 " She let her robe fall as she sprang forward 
 and now stood only as the hand of God had 
 fashioned her ; a snow-white silhouette of per 
 fect comeliness against the terrible and bloody 
 mouth and tossing mane of the lion. She leaned 
 forward as he came on around and close to the 
 edge of his slab. She looked him firmly and 
 steadily in the face, her wondrous eyes, her mid 
 night eyes of all Israel, the child of the wilder 
 ness, had once more met the lion of the desert 
 as of old. 
 
 " Who was this woman here who stepped 
 between death and me and stood looking a 
 wounded lion in the face ? Was this Judith 
 again incarnate ? Or was this something more 
 than Judith ? Was it the Priestess and the 
 Prophetess Miriam, back once more to the banks 
 of the Nile ? Was it the old and forgotten 
 mastery of all things animate which Moses and 
 his sister knew that gave her dominion over the 
 king of the desert ? Or was her name Mary ? 
 
 79 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 That Mary, if you will, who won all things 
 to her side, God in heaven, God upon earth, by 
 the sad, sweet pity of her face, and the story of 
 holy love that was written there ? The lion s 
 head for a moment forgot its lofty defiance as 
 she leaned a little forward. Then the tossed 
 and troubled mane rose up and rolled forward 
 like an inflowing sea. It seemed never so terri 
 ble. He was surely about to spring ! And she, 
 too ! Her right foot settled solidly back, her 
 left knee bent like a bow, her shapely and snowy 
 shoulders, under their glory of black hair, bowed 
 low. Her dauntless and defiant spirit had already 
 precipitated itself forward and was smiting the 
 imperious beast full in his blazing eyes. I felt 
 that her body would follow her spirit in an instant 
 more. 
 
 "Face to face! Spirit to spirit! Soul to soul! 
 A second only the combat lasted. The awful 
 ferocity and force of the brute was beaten down, 
 melted like soft battlements of snow before the 
 burning arrows of the sun, and he slowly, sur 
 lily, shrank in size, in spirit, in space. A paw 
 drew back from the edge of the block, the 
 eyes drooped, the head dropped a little, and the 
 80 
 
In the Sweat of Thy Face 
 
 terrible mane seemed terrible no more, as slowly, 
 doggedly, mightily, aye doggedly and majestically, 
 too, at the same time, this noble creature forced 
 himself sidewise and back a little. 
 
 " Then he hesitated. Rebellion was in his 
 mighty heart. He turned suddenly and looked 
 her full in the face once more. All the beast 
 that was in him rose up. The terrible mane 
 now seemed more terrible than before. With 
 great head tossed, tail whipped back, and teeth 
 in the air, talons unsheathed and legs gathered 
 under him, he was about to bound forward. 
 
 " But the woman was before him ! With eyes 
 still fastened on his face, she with one long leap 
 forward drove not only her shining soul but her 
 snowy body right against his teeth. Or rather, 
 she had surely done so had not the lion, half 
 turned about, shrank back as she leaped forward. 
 Then slowly, looking back with his blazing but 
 cowering eyes, feeling back with his spirit still 
 defiant, if but to see whether her courage failed 
 her in the least or her mighty spirit was still in 
 battle armor; and then he passed. His compan 
 ions had drawn back and into a depression in the 
 desert where he slowly and sullenly joined them. 
 
 6 81 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " One, two, three, four dim yet distinct black 
 silhouettes against the yellow east ; then but a 
 single confused black etching; away, away, 
 smaller and smaller, gone ! 
 
 " I gathered up her robe, crossed over, let it fall 
 on her shoulders where she still stood, looking 
 down and after the beast. She sighed : c I am 
 sorry, so sorry ; sorry for you both/ 
 
. The Christ in Egypt 
 
 O LAND of temples, land of tombs ! 
 
 O tawny land, O lion dead ! 
 O silent land of silent looms ; 
 
 Of kingly garments torn to shred ! 
 O land of storied wonder still, as when 
 Fair Joseph stood the chiefest of all men ! 
 
 The Christ in Egypt ! Egypt and 
 
 Her mystic star-tipt Pyramids ! 
 Her shoreless, tiger seas of sand ! 
 
 Her Sphynx with fixed and weary lids ! 
 Her red and rolling Nile of yellow sheaves 
 Where Moses cradled mid his lily leaves. 
 
 Her lorn, dread temples of the dead 
 Had waited, as mute milestones wait 
 
 By some untraversed way unread, 
 Until the King, or soon or late, 
 
 Should come that tomb-built way and silent pass 
 
 To read their signs above the sand-sown grass. 
 
 Behold ! amid this majesty 
 
 Of ruin, at the dust-heaped tomb 
 
 Of vanity came Christ to see 
 
 Earth s emptiness, the dark death-room 
 
 Of haughtiness, of kingly pomp, of greed, 
 
 Of gods of gold or stone, or storied creed. 
 
 And this His first abiding-place ! 
 
 And these dread scenes His childhood s toys ! 
 What wonder at that thoughtful face ? 
 
 That boy-face never yet a boy s ? 
 What wonder that the elders marveled when 
 A boy spake in the Temple unto men ? 
 
 83 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 WHEN the perfect woman comes and 
 she will come she will appeal to the 
 soul of man, not to his body ; and then the 
 perfect man will not be far off. 
 
 Whoever this majestic and beautiful woman 
 was, this piteously beautiful woman, whatever 
 she was yet to be or may have been, she seemed 
 to be, from the first time he encountered her at 
 Jerusalem, entirely unconscious of sex. She 
 seemed not to be a body, but a soul ; and a 
 soul, as said before, that was growing daily, as a 
 great magnolia flower-tree grows, with its perfect 
 flowers and its soft, warm, sensuous perfume, 
 widening, warming day by day till it fills the gar 
 den, turns all faces to this one flower-tree, draws 
 all things to itself, and drowns all senses but this 
 one sense of perfume and the perfection of form 
 and color. 
 
 As they had descended through the deserts and 
 wilderness, and, as before noted, had retraced the 
 ancient path by which Israel had gone up out of 
 Egypt, she seemed to this man who companioned 
 her, followed her afar off, to be all-powerful. 
 
 There is a lone obelisk where stood the city 
 On, famous as the place where Plato and others 
 
The Christ in Egypt 
 
 of the wise men studied philosophy, one lone 
 obelisk ; and that is all you can see to-day of the 
 storied city of On, where, it is still whispered, 
 men gathered together who knew all things, 
 even to the secrets that were before life and are 
 after death. 
 
 Some palm-trees stood not far away, and the 
 two sat on a toppled granite column in silence 
 there together as the sun was going down on 
 tawny, tired, and prostrate Egypt. 
 
 " Oh, to see Egypt rise up and stand erect in 
 her splendor once more before the end of the 
 world ! " He said this at last, as the sun lay 
 level on the red waters of the Nile, and dashed 
 the world with molten gold. 
 
 Was it a sense of pain that tinged her face, 
 displeasure, effort, exhaustion, something such as 
 Christ felt as he turned to the woman when she 
 touched the hem of His garment ? Or was it a 
 sense of his own unworthiness which made him 
 to imagine that a faint tinge of displeasure swept 
 over her face as she lifted it to the waters, and 
 in silence put forth her hand as she arose ? 
 
 Who shall say ? And what matter ? His 
 eyes, as he sprang to his feet, followed the direc- 
 85 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 tion of her hand, and there, before his startled 
 vision, in all her storied splendor of dome, citadel, 
 and battlement, grove, garden, turret and tower, 
 that melted into the hazy horizon and filled all 
 the face of the earth as far as the eye could 
 sweep, lay ancient Egypt. Describe the scene ? 
 The attempt would be profanity. Account for 
 this power of hers ? Or did she merely fancy 
 all this and make his fancy follow hers ? When 
 science will come forward and account for the 
 cities, seas, forests, armies with banners, heroes, 
 battle harness, that men see on the plains and 
 deserts of America, without even the presence 
 of any finer organization than their own to call 
 up these visions, then will it be time enough to 
 give some reasons here. 
 
 As her wearied hand fell to her side, she sank 
 back ; all Egypt of old fell down and lay again 
 in dust beneath her pyramids. He felt that now 
 she was as far away from him and above him 
 and beyond him, as was the farthest and loftiest 
 column she had recalled to existence. He sighed 
 as they turned in silence home. He now began 
 to see his uselessness and his helplessness in her 
 presence. All the manhood in the man began 
 86 
 
The Christ in Egypt 
 
 to rise in self-assertion. He grew more firmly 
 resolved than ever to go forth alone and meditate 
 and purify his soul, go up in the mountains to 
 pray, as did the prophets of old, till he, too, had 
 Faith. 
 
IX. Awaiting the Resurrection at 
 Karnak 
 
 LORN land of silence, land of awe ! 
 
 Lorn, lawless land of Moslem will, 
 The great Law-giver and the law 
 
 Have gone away together. Still 
 The sun shines on ; still Nilus darkly red 
 Steals on between his awful walls of dead. 
 
 And sapphire skies still bend as when 
 
 Proud Karnak s countless columns propped 
 
 The corners of the world 5 when men 
 Kept watch where massive Cheops topped 
 
 Their utmost reach of thought, and sagely drew 
 
 Their star-lit lines along the trackless blue. 
 
 But Phthah lies prostrate evermore ; 
 
 And Thoth and Neith all are gone ; 
 And huge Osiris hears no more, 
 
 Thebes melodies 5 nor Mut at On j 
 Yet one lone obelisk still lords the spot 
 Where Plato sat to learn. But On is not. 
 
 Nor yet has Time encompassed all ; 
 
 You trace your finger o er a name 
 That mocks at age within the wall 
 
 Of fearful Karnak. Sword nor flame 
 Shall touch what men have journeyed far to touch 
 And felt eternity in daring such ! 
 
 Juda Melchi Shishak ! Read 
 
 The Holy Book 5 read how that he 
 With chariot and champing steed 
 
 Invaded far and fair Judea. 
 Yea, read the chronicle of red hands laid 
 On " shields of gold which Solomon had made." 
 
Awaiting the Resurrection at Karnak 
 
 HE WOULD look once more upon Upper 
 Egypt through her eyes, and then away 
 about his work. She was so infinitely above him 
 that he could only clasp his hands and with lifted 
 face worship her ; he could worship her from 
 afar as well as near at hand. He could not love 
 her more, though he sat at her feet forever, and 
 walked at her side even through the shadows of 
 the valley of death. He would not, he could 
 not, love her less though millions of miles away. 
 
 Did I forget to tell you that her singularly 
 intense and perfect mentality took in and 
 absorbed to herself the minds, the inmost 
 thoughts of those who came in contact with 
 her ? She knew men s thoughts, may I say it, 
 with humbled head ? as Christ knew men s 
 thoughts. 
 
 " There is a tomb, mighty tomb, not far from 
 here," and this was at Karnak that she now 
 spoke, " which no man has entered since long, 
 long before Christ came to Egypt, and this you 
 should see." 
 
 She had been talking of his going, of his plans, 
 his purposes, talking to him in the same clear, 
 sweet way as in Jerusalem and at Nazareth, that 
 89 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 morning. And yet he had said nothing at all of 
 these things to her for a long time. 
 
 Knowing that she knew his heart, his hopes, 
 his plans, how quietly good, patient, and true he 
 had begun to grow ! And why should he tell 
 her anything, since she knew all and more than 
 all that he could possibly find words to utter in 
 all the centuries that are to be ? Why shall 
 time be wasted in helpless, inane, and angular 
 words at all ? Let us rather learn to read the 
 soul in silence, and respect it. 
 
 Their boat was rocking on the Nile as night 
 came on ; and, as the boatmen slowly rowed for 
 the sandy shore, which she had indicated with 
 her hand as the place of the hidden tomb, she 
 said to the man at her side, in her quiet and 
 fragmentary way : 
 
 " Yes, Christ surely raised the dead. And do 
 you not see that Egypt anticipated all that ? 
 She believed, she knew that some one would 
 some day walk this way so full of the fires of life 
 and immortality, so charged with that finer elec 
 tricity which men call life, about which they talk 
 so much but about which they know nothing at 
 all, as yet, that they laid their dead away ready 
 90 
 
Awaiting the Resurrection at Karnak 
 
 to rise up in all their glory on earth after their 
 long waiting for the Master." 
 
 More, much more she said ; and all so much 
 more intelligently than what is here so imper 
 fectly recalled and written down ! 
 
 It was a woeful, grewsome spot of bone and 
 stone, of sand and serpents, where they landed, 
 and all tracked about with the tracks of wide- 
 footed and enormous lions. And they had to 
 stoop low, almost kneel, to enter the mouth of 
 the cavern. There was no sign of man s hand 
 or foot, although she had come to it as if walk 
 ing a beaten road. 
 
 He had looked back and down to the men as 
 he stooped to enter the gloomy cavern. The 
 boatmen had anchored in the middle of the river, 
 were they afraid of lions ? It was soon dark 
 as they passed on and on in a stooping posture ; 
 but she assured him that in a little time they 
 would find the cavern lighted. With calm assur 
 ance she said that when the great founder of 
 Babylon had been laid to rest there, thousands of 
 years before, the walls were left lighted j no, not 
 with electricity, but with a phosphorescent light 
 that must endure while the Nile endures. 
 9 1 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 But it was wearisome, stooping and groping 
 so long and so far. He began to fear that she 
 had made some miscalculation and was lost. 
 There were other and deeper passes and many 
 tunnels that intersected this dark and narrow 
 one. He could feel them as he groped forward 
 after her, feel them, not altogether with his 
 hands, but with that other and finer feeling which 
 she had, by example, begun to teach him. She 
 paused, put out her hand, took his in hers for 
 the first time since that first meeting in Jeru 
 salem. But now her hand trembled, it was 
 almost cold. Had she indeed lost her way ? Had 
 she, with her superhuman knowledge and divine 
 gifts, really lost her way in that awful wilderness 
 of tombs ? Had she at last lost her strength, 
 her faith ? Suddenly she stopped short, and said : 
 " There is a lion in here." 
 
 The man tried to stand erect and take some 
 attitude of defence, if only to encourage her. 
 There was no room to rise erect. 
 
 But now her blood began to tide and flow 
 
 again. Her hand was warm once more and her 
 
 heart strong. u We will go forward," she said 
 
 as she again led the way, " for to go back will 
 
 9* 
 
Awaiting the Resurrection at Karnak 
 
 be to invite destruction. He is not far away; 
 I think he is waiting in one of the side passes. 
 There ! " 
 
 Her hand was again like ice, but only for a 
 time. They stood leaning, looking forward in 
 the fearful darkness at two glittering lights, 
 round, full, flaming lights that broadened and 
 brightened and gleamed and glowed with a fierce 
 ness, a hungry, animal fierceness that you could 
 feel. It was something more than light, it was 
 heat. It was heat that chilled, turned you cold 
 and froze you to the marrow. The man, although 
 trained to the use of arms and not without 
 address in danger, had, ever since coming into 
 her higher atmosphere, and especially since that 
 night up the Yellow Nile, despised their use ; 
 and so here he stooped and groped, as helpless 
 and unmanned as a babe. 
 
 But her old faith came back, even as she 
 looked into the burning fires before her, and with 
 a pressure of her warm hand she led forward. 
 The pass widened now and was roomier in every 
 way. It soon became a sort of court, great 
 columns of red and gray and blue granite prop 
 ping the mountains above. On the outer edge 
 93 
 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 of this court lay the huge lion, his nose on his 
 paws, his eyes, his terribly beautiful eyes only, 
 giving the least sign of life or action. But for 
 those eyes of fire and flame, he, too, might have 
 been counted as one of the thousand images that 
 kept attendance on the great Babylonian who sat 
 his throne in robes of state in the vast, wide 
 court far beyond. 
 
 That distant inner court was still lighted, as 
 she had said, after all the thousands of years ; 
 and there the mighty hunter of Babylon had sat 
 his golden and marble and granite throne as time 
 rolled by, resting and resting and serenely wait 
 ing the resurrection. The shapely columns, in 
 all their comeliness and strength, stood out before 
 the far-off" light in stately splendor. 
 
 Miriam did not pause for one moment. She 
 held the man s hand tight and close, to make 
 certain that he, too, should keep right on as she 
 might lead. The lion did not move ; he did not 
 even lift his eyes as they drew near. But sud 
 denly his tail whipped slightly in the dust ; then 
 the woman led a little to the left, leaving a col 
 umn between her path and the paws of the lion. 
 The huge beast seemed pleased with this slight 
 94 
 
Awaiting the Resurrection at Karnak 
 
 concession ; and only noting that they kept 
 straight on, knowing surely that there was but 
 one way out and that he was thrown full length 
 in the only path of exit, he awaited results with 
 that dignity which is born of boundless strength 
 and absolute assurance. He could afford to wait 
 just a little. 
 
 u Yes, here is faith for you ; certainly of 
 immortality on earth. Look ! Nimrod, the 
 mighty hunter, armed and ready for battle with 
 beasts of the forest, as of old ! He has only 
 been resting here all these centuries, ready to rise 
 up and begin life again just as he left off when 
 he lay down to die ; as we all shall." 
 
 She had forgotten the lion in this supreme 
 moment to which she had looked forward so long, 
 and, possibly at times, with some doubt. But 
 she was now certain that Egypt had been not 
 only the mother of all ancient civilization, but 
 the mother of Babylon s founder and the burial- 
 place of her mighty dead for ages. 
 
 Reverently she approached the foot of the 
 
 lofty throne and kneeled on the polished red 
 
 granite below, where reached the staff, the long 
 
 beam of the hunter s spear, still clutched in his 
 
 95 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 right hand, and ready for use when he should 
 rise again. 
 
 How long they meditated there, in that soft 
 and hallowed light and holy perfume of the past, 
 no one can say. There are times that despise 
 time, that throw time away as a drunken spend 
 thrift throws coins away ; and there is an intoxi 
 cation of the soul and senses at times like this 
 that puts the intoxication of the body, even from 
 the rarest wines, to the blush. 
 
 Suddenly there was a low, slow, deep rumble. 
 It seemed as if the cavern, or court of the kingly 
 dead, began to rock, and roll, and shake and 
 tremble ; then a roar ! 
 
 It rolled, bounded, echoed, rebounded, filled 
 the place and all places, all the passes, got lost, 
 could not find its way out, came back, bounded 
 from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, and 
 finally went back and moaned and died in that 
 lion s monstrous jaws and tawny mane. 
 
 He rose up, came forward, and then, as if he 
 had only been jesting at first in a sort of sup 
 pressed whisper, he roared again, again and again. 
 
 Five steps of polished red granite of the 
 throne of the mighty dead with spear in hand ; 
 96 
 
Awaiting the Resurrection at Karnak 
 
 but they made it at a single bound, she to the 
 left and he to the right. 
 
 The man was about to pluck the spear from 
 the dark and dusty hand and do battle for the 
 woman he deified ; but she looked him in the 
 face across the face of the king, and he bowed 
 his head and stepped back in silence, as her now 
 burning hand reached further and fell familiarly 
 on the outstretched left hand of the mighty 
 hunter where it rested on the arm of the throne. 
 
 Was it a halo about her head ? Was it divine 
 fire that flamed from her burning hand ? Nay, 
 no questions. They cannot be answered here. 
 We may only know that some subtile essence 
 fire ? magnetism ? electricity ? flowed and 
 swept and shot from her hand, from her body, 
 to his body. And then the mighty hunter was 
 on his feet. As the lion laid his long, strong paw 
 on the third step of the throne, with his tail 
 whipped back in the air and his two terrible 
 hinder legs bent low and gathered for a leap at 
 the man s throat, the spear was in place ; face to 
 face stood the lion and his master, once more and 
 at last after all these thousands of years ! And 
 the lion knew his master. He knew him only- 
 7 97 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 from tradition ; but the story of his powers had 
 come down to him with his very blood, and he 
 knew his kingly master when he met him, even 
 in the house of death. 
 
 Sullenly, slowly, and with a dignity worthy 
 the occasion and the two mighty kings, the lion 
 dragged, dragged, as if he had to drag it down 
 by force, that great ponderous paw. It literally 
 tore the granite, but he got it down. He got 
 his eyes down from the eyes of the dead ; and 
 then sidewise, slowly, gracefully, grandly, with 
 long and stately strides, only the quivering of his 
 flanks telling of his anger, be bowed his head 
 and left the court and crept from the fearful cav 
 ern. And when they had ceased to look and 
 listen to make certain he was surely gone, the 
 dead was sitting there as at first. 
 
 9 8 
 
X.The Voice of Toil 
 
 COME, lean an ear, an earnest ear, 
 To Nature s breast, some stilly eve, 
 
 And you shall hear, shall surely hear 
 The Carpenter, and shall believe j 
 
 Shall surely hear, shall hear for aye, who will, 
 
 The patient strokes of Christ resounding still. 
 
 The thud of loom, the hum of wheel, 
 
 That steady stroke of Carpenter ! 
 And was this all ? Did God reveal 
 
 No gleam of light to Him, to her ? 
 No gleam of hopeful light, sweet toiling friend, 
 Save that which burneth dimly at the end. 
 
 That beggar at the rich man s gate ! 
 
 That rich man moaning down in hell ! 
 And all life s pity, all life s hate ! 
 
 Yea, toil lay on Him like a spell. 
 Stop still and think of Christ, of Mary there, 
 Her lifted face but one perpetual prayer. 
 
 I can but hope at such sore time, 
 
 When all her soul went out so fond, 
 
 She touched the very stars sublime 
 
 And took some sense of worlds beyond ; 
 
 And took some strength to ever toil and wait 
 
 The glories bursting through God s star-built gate. 
 
 And He so silent, patient, sad, 
 
 As seeing all man s sorrows through ! 
 
 How could the Christ be wholly glad 
 To know life s pathos as He knew, 
 
 To know, and know that all the beauteous years 
 
 Man still will waste in battle, blood, and tears ? 
 
 99 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 Enough of antiquity, of dust, and of the dead ; 
 enough of speculation, enough of idleness. Turn we 
 now to toil. Enough, and more than enough of the 
 old ; turn we now to the new, to follow the stroke 
 of the Carpenter s Son, the sound of Mary s loom, 
 or the voice of the dove in the olive-trees. 
 
 But one word before bidding a long adieu to the 
 old world and this strange, strong woman of the old. 
 
 I do not say or even suggest that she was the rein 
 carnation of that Miriam who was made " leprous 
 white " because of her anger with her brother when 
 he married " the Ethiopian woman." I know 
 nothing at all about such things. But I am per 
 mitted to believe that our business is with this world 
 mainly, and with the things of this world ; that 
 other worlds have their own, and are and ought to 
 be concerned mainly with their own ; that it is a 
 fact and a very practical fact, that u the kingdom 
 of heaven is at hand" 
 
 Immortality ? Certain of it. But it is here. 
 Individuality in the next life ? Certain of it, if a 
 grain and not a husk. As no atom of earth perishes, 
 so shall no soul perish or lose its personality. The 
 real acorn, the real grain of wheat does not perish 
 or lose its identity in dust. It is only the worthless 
 
 100 
 
The Voice of Toil 
 
 grain and the husk and shell that passes back to the 
 common mould. 
 
 So, then, if you want immortality, make it. If 
 you want your soul saved, make it worth saving. 
 
 These thoughts, bear in mind, are not intruded 
 upon any one, and are but timidly and feebly let fall 
 here as " the still, small rain." 
 
 A LARGE solemnity like twilight, almost 
 like night, had settled down on Miriam 
 and the man also, on their return to the vicinity 
 of Cairo. He knew that work was now before 
 him, and he was glad of .that. But would she 
 be at his side ? No toil could be weary where 
 she was. There could be no rest, no light, 
 no life, nothing for him, save his love for her, 
 where she was not. 
 
 He tried to be very honest with himself, with 
 her. But think it over as he might, recall each 
 act and utterance, yet in all their intercourse he 
 could find nothing on which to hang a hope that 
 she would be with him to the end, be his own. 
 And then she was so silent, so sadly silent of 
 late, all the time. True, she was not strong, 
 strong of body ; for as her soul grew strong her 
 
1 he Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 body grew weak. Even little threads of silver 
 had wound themselves through her heavy meshes 
 of midnight hair, and her glorious face was wan 
 and pallid as the moonlight in which they sat by 
 the deep-red Nile this last night in Egypt. But 
 he loved her all the more for that. The more ? 
 how could that have been ? Let us say, with 
 a tenderness that was new and holy. 
 
 But his heart was bursting for some sight, 
 some sound. Would she let him go, and go on 
 alone, with no assurance that she would follow 
 and follow soon, be with him in heart, and soul 
 too, all the time ? 
 
 He would put the matter to the test at once. 
 As we have seen, he was not given to words any 
 more than was she. 
 
 " You know I love you, Miriam." 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " And you ? " 
 
 Her two hands lifted up and pushed back the 
 great mass of black hair from her fine, white 
 face, and it came out to him like the moon of 
 heaven, and with her face turned full to his she 
 said, slowly, softly, and so very sweetly : 
 
 " I love you." 
 
The Voice of Toil 
 
 It was the first time she had spoken so. 
 
 The hands remained above and about the face, 
 framing it like a face of the Madonna. 
 
 " You, you will be mine ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 u God bless you, Miriam, for that promise. 
 But you know I go now to begin my work in 
 the New World. When will you be mine ? 
 Where ? At what time ? " 
 
 " Time ? " Her hands fell down and lay so 
 heavily in her lap he dared not try to touch them, 
 and she said, looking away beyond, as if at the 
 ghost of Thebes and her hundred gates: "Time? 
 Not in time, eternity." 
 
 He sprang up and threw his arms" tightly 
 together across his breast. 
 
 u And this is your resolution ? " 
 
 " Why, dare I be idly happy with all this 
 misery on earth before me ? Think of that 
 blind woman with the three naked children yes 
 terday in the street ; she had the arms and the 
 mummy-head of some ancestor, selling them for 
 a bit of bread, here in fruitful Egypt ! For them, 
 no blame. They know no better. You and I 
 know better. For unto whomsoever much is 
 103 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 given, of him shall be much required. The 
 cross and the crown are bound together. Let 
 us go our ways, help to make the crooked 
 straight, and then, in some after life " 
 
 Her voice was inaudible now. Her face sank 
 low and was hidden from his sight ; but he saw 
 hot tears falling on her hand ; and she was 
 sacred and holy to him as if a halo had descended 
 upon her. 
 
 Then she rose up slowly, her face still bent 
 down, and giving her two hands, said : 
 
 u Go ; do your work, do good." 
 
 " And you ? " 
 
 " I, I will come to you sometime ; but go, 
 go now." 
 
 What a tower, what a pillar of fire was that 
 promise : " I will come to you sometime ! 
 Go, go now. I will come to you sometime. 
 Good-bye ! " 
 
 It was a Nile night. To those who have 
 lived by the Nile nothing more need be said to 
 describe the sensuous scene and air. To those 
 who have not dwelt there the description would 
 be as idle as ungrateful. There were palm-trees 
 in the ancient garden by which the lion-river 
 104 
 
The Voice of Toil 
 
 crept in all his sinuous and supple splendor. 
 The moon made little paths and patches and 
 quivering mosaics of silver all up and down the 
 sands to walk upon. 
 
 A boat with a single oarsman rocked and 
 rested in the lotus leaves by the level bank above, 
 and at the end of the garden a single nude, black 
 boatman. It was a very quiet place. No boat 
 had landed there in all the time they had lived 
 here. 
 
 He turned away, passed down the garden with 
 slow step, empty-handed, alone, and with one 
 word "Good-bye" on his lips. They could not 
 have uttered more than that one word. His 
 resolution was almost failing him, for his heart 
 was breaking. Then suddenly he turned about, 
 flew back to her, threw out his hands and cried : 
 "Good-bye, Miriam!" 
 
 Mechanically and slowly and with kindly eyes 
 and half-parted lips, she took his outstretched 
 hands in silence. He pulled her to him, pulled 
 her violently, pressed her to his heart as his right 
 hand swept swiftly about her body, pressed his 
 lips to her proud lips as she struggled and as her 
 head fell back in her effort to escape ; and then 
 105 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 he set her hastily in her place and was gone. 
 Intensely, triumphantly beat his heart as he 
 leaped into his boat, sped away, and hastened to 
 embark for other lands. And long, long, as he 
 voyaged away, he tried to believe, tried to hope, 
 that there had been at least the faintest thrill of 
 response, and that he had not been entirely a 
 savage. 
 
 106 
 
XI. The Foundation Stones 
 
 BE THOU not angered. Go thy way 
 
 From God s high altar to the low j 
 Nor think to kneel and truly pray, 
 
 Till thou art reconciled and know 
 Thou hast forgiven him j as thou must be 
 Forgiven of the sins that burthen thee. 
 
 And if thine eye tempt thee to shame 
 
 Turn thou aside j pluck it away ! 
 And with thy right hand deal the same, 
 
 Nor tempt thy soul to sin this day. 
 Yea, thou art very weak. Thou couldst not make 
 One hair turn white or black, for thine own sake. 
 
 And whosoever smite thy cheek, 
 
 Turn thou that he may smite again. 
 The truly brave are truly meek, 
 
 And bravely bear both shame and pain. 
 They slay, if truly brave men ever slay, 
 Their foes, with sweet forgiveness, day by day. 
 
 And if a man would take thy coat, 
 Give him thy cloak and count it meet. 
 
 Bread cast on waters can but float 
 In sweet forgiveness to thy feet j 
 
 So thou, by silent act like this, shalt preach 
 
 Such sermons as not flame nor sword can teach. 
 
 Lay not up treasures for yourselves 
 
 On earth, and stint and starve the soul 
 
 By heaping granaries and shelves 
 
 And high store-houses ; for the whole 
 
 Of wealth is this : to grow and grow and grow 
 
 In faith j to know and ever seek to know. 
 107 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 Therefore give not too much of thought 
 
 For thy to-morrows. Birds that call 
 Sweet melodies sow not, reap not, 
 
 And yet the Father feedeth all. 
 Therefore toil trusting, loving ; watch and pray, 
 And pray in secret j pray not long, but say : 
 
 Give us our daily bread this day, 
 
 Forgive our sins as we forgive, 
 Lead us not in temptation s way, 
 
 Deliver us, that we may live ; 
 For thine the kingdom is, has ever been, 
 And thine the power, glory, and Amen ! 
 
 ON a huge mass of hills, hills heaped and 
 banked and tumbled on top of hills by the 
 great sea of seas, and above the Golden Gate, 
 the man at last pitched his tent and began to 
 build his city. 
 
 Water percolated through the broken rocks 
 here and there and formed little pools, where 
 poor, half-starved cattle and sheep had gathered 
 for half a century and made dismal moan for 
 provender as they trampled the rich, black mould 
 into unsightly masses of mud. 
 
 It was a doleful, grewsome place indeed, if 
 you looked near about you or down into the mud. 
 But to look up to the stars ! To look down to 
 the bay of San Francisco ; look out through the 
 Golden Gate on the great sea, to count the 
 108 
 
"The Foundation Stones 
 
 moving ships, to behold the fleets of snow-white 
 clouds that drew in at the sunset from the Japan 
 seas, to feel the keen, cool winds of Alaska in 
 July ! Ah, it was a glorious place if you could 
 only keep your face toward the sea or up toward 
 heaven, and your heart on your duty to man. 
 
 And what heaps of stone ! stones from the 
 topmost peak of his hundred acres to the bottom 
 limit of his possessions ; stones enough for the 
 material foundations of a large city indeed ! As 
 for its moral foundations, no city ever has been 
 built, or ever can be built, to endure with any 
 other than the precepts at the head of this chap 
 ter, the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 Of course it would have been a pleasant thing 
 if this man could have chosen a rich valley by 
 some great river, where commerce, in the spirit 
 of the age, and enterprising people with quick 
 discernment of advantage would come his way 
 at once. It would be pleasant to write down the 
 peace and rest and swift prosperity that would 
 have followed such a choice of location. But 
 we have ugly facts, not pleasant fancy, to con 
 front and deal with now. 
 
 The man took the mountain-top, and at the 
 109 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 cost of all he had saved in more than half a life 
 time, simply because a place in the valley was 
 not to be had for what he had to give. 
 
 "All the better," he said. " If I succeed on 
 these steeps and heaps of stone, the greater good 
 and the braver will be my lesson to the world. 
 The main thing is to teach and to prove that all 
 men are good or trying to be good ; and that all 
 the world and all things in it are beautiful or try 
 ing to be beautiful. I shall plant roses here 
 where I find thorns, trees where I find thistles ; 
 and if I can make this most barren and most 
 unsightly of all places on earth beautiful, my 
 example will not be lost." And his heart was 
 all the time with Her, and all the time he kept 
 saying over and over her last words : " I will 
 come to you sometime." 
 
 His heap of steep hills sloped to the sun and 
 the sea ; but back in the rear a deep and wooded 
 and watered canyon bent like a scimitar and shut 
 out all the world behind him. It was a wild and 
 a glorious place ; wolves, catamounts, hosts of 
 wild creatures housed there, to say nothing of the 
 birds that sang and reared their pretty broods in 
 the redwood groves and groves of madrona, 
 
The Foundation Stones 
 
 willow, and bay-trees. But he built his little 
 house out in the sun with the Golden Gate in 
 sight, and here he began to plant trees, and to 
 plant and to plant and to plant. He would first 
 make it attractive, and then invite thinkers, poets, 
 men of mind who had a mind to rest, to come 
 and sit down and share it with him; then the 
 world would see and learn and live. Then She 
 would come ! And why did he begin and toil 
 on so entirely alone ? He did not begin alone ; 
 or did not propose to do that at first. 
 
 He had found, after much care, a small party 
 of men with purposes not unlike his own. But 
 when it came to the toil, the privations, the 
 weary prospect of long waiting for roads to be 
 built, for trees to grow up and bear fruit, for the 
 world to come that way and admire and praise, 
 they melted away, one after one, and went down 
 to the city by the sea and left him all alone. It 
 would be tedious, even if it would be credible, 
 to tell how terribly hard he toiled. But there 
 was fierce excitement in closing in and making 
 clean the muddy springs of water, in training 
 the pure, trickling streams down the tortuous 
 new roadside where roses were newly set by the 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 newly built wall. To see the response of the 
 roses ! real gratitude indeed ! And then the 
 down-trodden grass how glad it was to lift up 
 its head after forty years ! 
 
 But then at last he must have help. He could 
 earn money in various little ways, and would 
 employ some one to help him in his persistent 
 toil. But whom ? 
 
 When we employ a man we must not think 
 entirely of ourselves. We must think of his 
 good as well as our own. He needs this con 
 sideration. 
 
 From far across San Pablo bay, the lights from 
 the watch-towers of the penitentiary shot sharp 
 and continuously in at the door of our silent city- 
 builder. This.vexed him sorely at first.* It made 
 him miserable to think of the misery there when 
 he so needed rest. 
 
 But at last his soul ascended to the duty before 
 it. He went to the prison warden and engaged 
 that each month he should send him the first 
 discharged convict who desired work. The first 
 to come was a poor drunkard. It was not quite 
 an ideal life, this sleeping in the same little cot 
 tage with an illiterate drunkard. True, the poor, 
 
"The Foundation Stones 
 
 sullen inebriate did not know that his history was 
 known to the city-builder, but still he was ugly 
 and cross. He did not like the place ; and so 
 he soon disappeared, taking what he could lay 
 hands on. 
 
 The next was a bright young man who had 
 been a book-keeper, and stolen money from his 
 employer. 
 
 Thinking his history unknown, he frankly told 
 it the first night. They became friends. When 
 he drew his first wages he went down into the 
 city, into the sea, as it were, and was drowned, 
 drowned first in alcohol and then found dead 
 in the bay. 
 
 The third was a witless man and an honest 
 man, who insisted on telling his story, hat in 
 hand, before he would sit down. He had been 
 convicted of stealing cattle, and did not assert 
 his innocence till he stood with his month s 
 wages in his hand to set out for the gold mines 
 of Alaska. 
 
 Taken altogether, these experiments were in- 
 no way fruitless nor discouraging. Now and 
 again he wrought entirely alone. And as he 
 toiled, he took the three convicts and their con- 
 
 8 113 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 duct under the closest consideration. And the 
 prayer of Jesus Christ, the one prayer, as taught 
 him by that clear-eyed woman from the gates 
 of Jerusalem, kept in his mind and before him 
 always : " Lead us not into temptation ! Lead 
 us not into temptation ! Lead us not into 
 temptation ! " 
 
 He had tempted the first unhappy convict to 
 fall. The poor, weak-minded, and sullen man 
 could not resist the temptation to take the man s 
 horse and ride away in the night. He was, then, 
 himself the guilty man. 
 
 As for the second man, he, too, had been 
 tempted, tempted even to his death by Society 
 and the State. 
 
 As for the third man, no better man could 
 have been found. 
 
 By this time vultures began to gather around 
 and sit on the rocks. They said : " This man 
 with his non-resistance and turn-the-other-cheek 
 must fail, die ; and some one must pick his 
 bones." 
 
 This was an ugly fact, but who was to blame ? 
 " Be ye wise as serpents, but as harmless as 
 
 doves." 
 
 114 
 
The Foundation Stones 
 
 Would a really wise man have come forward 
 and publicly and continuously declared, in the 
 midst of a people who were devoted entirely to 
 money-getting, that he would give to the man 
 who took his coat, his cloak also ? 
 
 He was tempting some weak men beyond their 
 power to resist. He was literally calling out to 
 the vultures to come from the four parts of the 
 world and wait on the rocks and crags for him 
 to die, when they should gorge on his remains. 
 
 People came and went as the years went by, 
 some queer people, some curious people, and 
 some good people ; or rather some people who 
 had had better fortune, better opportunities to be 
 good than those who are called bad. 
 
 " Now, look here ! " said an honest and ob 
 serving man one day to the city-builder, digging 
 on his hill, " all this that you are trying to do has 
 been done before, or at least attempted. You 
 are, perhaps, a good man, a very good man ; 
 but you are not the only good man that has been. 
 You may build and build, but the sea of selfish 
 ness will roll over your city and all your enter 
 prises here when you die, before you can be 
 carried to the grave." 
 
 "5 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 This had been said in answer to his complaints 
 about the vultures that continually hovered 
 around. He had, in his distress, cried out to 
 this good man, and said : 
 
 u ln the olden time the ravens fed the prophets; 
 but now it seems to me that the prophets must 
 feed not only the ravens, but the vultures also." 
 
 And it must be conceded that he had the 
 most substantial reasons for complaining. 
 
 For example : A stout German, whose lands 
 shut him out from the city, nailed up his road, 
 and demanded an acre of land for the right of 
 way. The man gave him a deed for three acres. 
 But this is only one example of his folly and the 
 persistence of the vultures, and we hasten on. 
 
 And yet these people on this mountain-side 
 were in some sense better than those in the 
 valley below, and those in the valley below were 
 better than those in the city beyond. 
 
 How pitiful, how piteously pitiful it all is, as 
 things now are ! This man, worn out at last, 
 bodily and mentally, sat down and tried to see 
 light beyond. There was no light to be seen. 
 He saw that he would ultimately be ground to 
 dust between the hard and selfish elements that 
 116 
 
The Foundation Stones 
 
 environed him. He might carry his experiments 
 forward to the end of his own natural life ; he 
 might not be crucified before his time to die; 
 yet he foresaw clearly that his very dust and 
 ashes would be divided among those about him 
 at his death, and all his hopes and plans and per 
 sistent toil of body and mind would be as if he 
 had never been. 
 
 He began to search the book of Nature for 
 some possible solution of the hard problem 
 before him ; and he began to see that Nature 
 had in some way or other protected whatever she 
 wished to perpetuate. Even the timid rabbit, 
 that sat with wide eyes and large ears under the 
 trees which he had planted on his hillsides, was 
 not neglected. His coat turned gray each sea 
 son as the grass turned gray ; and when the win 
 ter approached, with a sprinkle of snow on the 
 hillside, the keen-eyed hawk that looked down 
 out of the snow-cloud above saw that the rabbit 
 had a new coat as white as the snows about him, 
 and that it required the keenest of keen eyes to 
 distinguish him from the tufts of grass and snow. 
 
 " Yet I," said the man to himself, " with all 
 the lessons of Nature before me, have dared to 
 117 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 lay my breast bare to all men ; and they have 
 pierced me through and through." 
 
 One day a small man, with a gray beard, 
 came up the hill meekly washing his hands, and 
 in a mild and sympathetic voice said : 
 
 " You seem discouraged. Let me assist you. 
 I have watched you and your work with the 
 deepest interest, and now that you seem so weary 
 I have come to save you. Yes, I am a real- 
 estate agent. There are too many real-estate 
 agents in the town, three hundred of them. 
 There are nearly two hundred lawyers ; there are 
 more than fifty preachers ; there are twice as 
 many doctors, all living on a small city. But 
 I have come to save you. I will sell some of 
 your land. This will give you money to go 
 ahead. I have your permission ? " 
 
 The small, gray man had not paused for an 
 answer, nor did he wait for a single word, but 
 again washing his hands and smiling again his 
 sickly smile, and still talking on in a soft and 
 sympathetic tone, he crept backward, and crawled 
 like a serpent down the hill to sell the land. 
 
 Now, there is nothing in this incident worth 
 telling. The only excuse for it is the ugly truth 
 118 
 
The Foundation Stones 
 
 that these idle, cunning men, made desperate by 
 competition, are crowding every city, and plying 
 their trade to the very verge of crime, most 
 miserable themselves and making others miser 
 able. What a jar of Egyptian vipers is the heart 
 and soul of a city to-day ! 
 
 119 
 
XII. -The First Law of God 
 
 LOOK back, beyond the Syrian sand, 
 
 Beyond the awful flames that burst 
 O er Sinai ! The first command 
 
 Outside the gates, God s very first, 
 Was this : " Thou shalt in sweat and patient toil 
 Eat bread till thou returnest to the soil." 
 
 "\7~OU have a rough place here, it seems to 
 A me," said a man with bag and gun and 
 dog as he came around a crag up out of the can 
 yon one evening. There was a tone of derision 
 in the voice of the hunter. He was from the 
 city, and seemed to think the man who was trying 
 to plant a little olive-tree in a cleft of the crag 
 ought to not only let him have the shooting of 
 the birds, but a better road to flush them from. 
 Our city-builder was weary, and for a moment 
 was angry. But lifting his face from his work 
 he laid the little olive down, and slowly straight 
 ening his back he looked the man in the face, and 
 then looked about and above, and then said quiet 
 ly as he did so, "Yes, yes, it is rather rough 
 under foot ; but it is as smooth overhead as any 
 man s land." 
 
The First Law of God 
 
 The hunter whistled to his dog, and left the 
 man with the little olive-tree alone in his clouds. 
 For he did not understand ;^and we are always 
 afraid of that which we do not understand.J 
 
 The lonely man on the peak kept on planting 
 his olive-trees in the clouds. He thought of 
 the dove bringing an olive-branch in its beak, 
 " plucked off," and reflected that the ancients 
 must have planted their loftiest peaks in olive- 
 trees and made them flourish, and so took heart 
 a little. He finished planting his tree, and being 
 very weary and very lonely he lay down by his 
 mattock, with his face to the glorious Balboa 
 seas below, and thought of Jacob on the plains 
 of Shinar as he pillowed his head on a stone and 
 slept and dreamed. 
 
 Lo ! on the plains of Bethel lay 
 
 An outworn lad, unhoused, alone, 
 His couch the tawny mother clay, 
 
 His pillow that storm-haunted stone ; 
 The hollow winds howled down the star-lit plain, 
 All white and wild with highborn wintry rain. 
 
 Yet here God s ladder was let down, 
 
 Yea, only here for aye and aye ! 
 Not in the high-walled, splendid town, 
 
 Not to the throned king feasting high, 
 But far afield beneath the Syrian stars 
 God s ladder fell from out the golden bars. 
 
 121 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 And ever thus. Take heart ! to some 
 
 The hand of Fortune pours her horn 
 Of plenty, smiling where they come ; 
 
 And some to fcme and some to wealth are born, 
 And some are born to pomp and splendid ease 5 
 But lo ! God s shining ladder leans to none of these. 
 
 The German neighbor on the hillside below 
 saw the weary dreamer through the rift of clouds 
 that came driving in from the sea with the stars, 
 and kindly came up the peak and awoke him. 
 
 " It von t pay you to plant olive-trees here. 
 Vy you do dees ? " 
 
 " To make my little portion of the world more 
 beautiful." 
 
 " Boh ! I do n t believe in beauty ; dot do n t 
 pay." 
 
 " Then you do not believe in God ? " 
 
 " Veil, not in dot sort of a God, nohow." 
 
 This German had been amazed at the man s 
 deeding him so much more land than he had 
 demanded. He thought it was a mistake at 
 first ; and so for months had said nothing. But 
 at last he could conceal his curiosity no longer. 
 Leaning over the shoulder of the man from 
 whom he had received it, one Sunday as he sat 
 reading, he said : 
 
 " My lawyer, he say when a deed is recorded 
 
The First Law of God 
 
 it is done mit, and no one can change it. So 
 dot matter he is settled mit. You owe me 
 netting, and I owe you netting. But tell me 
 vy you make it t ree for one." 
 
 Slowly the man opened the Book at the Ser 
 mon on the Mount and quietly proceeded to 
 read. He paused a moment when he came to 
 the thirty-first verse ; then he read in a slow, 
 low, and kindly voice, and closing the book, 
 he looked his neighbor calmly in the face and 
 repeated : "And if a man will sue thee at 
 law and take away thy coat, let him have 
 thy cloak also." 
 
 Now this big, hearty German was not a bad 
 man ; he was, in fact, far from a bad man as the 
 world goes. But this strange, new man had 
 tempted him, and the end was not yet. 
 
 Meantime the people for his city, to people 
 his city, did not come, save to look on curiously 
 and go away. The City Beautiful was building 
 slowly indeed. 
 
 At last one man with much money came and 
 proposed to build and abide, with all his house 
 hold. 
 
 "And you are certain it will pay me ? " 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " Perfectly certain that it will pay you im 
 mensely, sir." 
 
 " Well, if you are so certain I can make 
 money " 
 
 " Stop ! Who said money ? I said it will pay 
 you. But to make money here on these rocks ! 
 Why, you might as well try to plant God s 
 altar in corn, or to grow wheat on the pinnacle 
 of Saint Paul s cross, as to make money on these 
 glorious heights. No ; you would be paid, but 
 you would take your pay from the heaped-up 
 gold of the golden sunsets of the Golden Gate ; 
 from the silver banks of clouds beyond; from 
 the certificates of perfect health from the far-off 
 Japan seas ; from the satisfaction of having built 
 or helped to build one, just one, City of Refuge, 
 where the Jews had so many. From these and 
 the like of these you would be paid ten-thousand 
 fold, my friend, but you would make no money." 
 
 " Well, I will think it over, and I may come 
 back." 
 
 He did not come back ; and so the world 
 
 kept on going by the other way. True, crowds 
 
 came oftentimes, carriages and carriages, on 
 
 Sundays ; for the drives were good, the air deli- 
 
 124 
 
The First Law of God 
 
 cious, the spectacle of the seas and cities below 
 divinely glorious. But with the exception of a 
 painter, a poet, a traveler who came to rest for 
 a few days, the City Beautiful continued to be 
 uninhabited. 
 
 Finally a friend in Japan sent two little Japa 
 nese gentlemen from Tokio, to serve him, to be 
 his companions, to hear his philosophy, to learn 
 his interpretation of the story and teachings of 
 Christ. And this was good ! " At last, at last !" 
 said the hermit. 
 
 On the third day after they came a big Irish 
 man and his followers came to the hermit s cot 
 tage. 
 
 " We are a committee," said the leader, " for 
 the protection of white labor. You are a labor 
 ing man, and of course will stand by white labor. 
 The Japs must go, or they will get the worst of 
 
 *" 
 
 The man tried to protest, but all his protesta 
 tions were of no avail. The foreigners said 
 their children would stone the Japanese as they 
 went up and down the road if they did not leave. 
 The man told his two little strangers all, and 
 they quietly and with scarcely a word gathered 
 , 1*5 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 up their books, bowed their heads sadly, and 
 were gone. 
 
 And so ended the only little ray of sunlight 
 that had broken through the clouds for a long, 
 long time. They had been so humble, so will 
 ing to learn, so ready to help, so patient, so filled 
 with that dignity which is the only humility, and 
 that humility which is the only perfect dignity, 
 that he had learned to love them truly and deeply. 
 They had had that spirit of meekness in them 
 that could wash a brother s feet and yet not seem 
 foolish. And when they went away he bowed 
 his head in his hands at the table and was well- 
 nigh broken-hearted. 
 
 But he took up the Book after a time and 
 read once more the Sermon on the Mount. 
 Then he read it again. He closed the lids a 
 little bit savagely after this last reading. He 
 spent the next few days in the canyon, cutting 
 out the poison-oak, a task which none other 
 had ever been willing to perform. 
 
 How weary in spirit he was ! and She had not 
 kept her promise to come. How sore at heart, 
 how sick of it all ! He had grown gray here in 
 a little time. The end was not far off. 
 126 
 
The First Law of God 
 
 "Ah, if I could only take this deep, cool can 
 yon, with its pleasant waters and its profound 
 woods, and go to some far-away place ! But 
 no j that would be turning my back on the bat 
 tle to which God has set my face. I shall fight 
 it out here. Happily, it will not be long now ; 
 whatever comes, I shall not run away." 
 
 The next day was Sunday. The big Ger 
 man came, came alone, with his coat thrown 
 leisurely over his arm. The hermit was at 
 his little desk in his study, as was his habit 
 on this day. 
 
 "Ah, Japs gone, eh? Dot s right; plenty 
 of good German girls to be had, an dem lots 
 better nor Japs. But I vant to see you about 
 you cut down dem shade from der vater in 
 der canyon. Of course it is on your own 
 ground ; but you see der vater runs down by 
 me. I vant der vater kept cool for my ducks 
 and pigs and chickens. Now, if you cut down 
 der bushes, dot lets in der sun, dot makes der 
 vater varm. My lawyer, he say if you do dot 
 you must pay me." 
 
 " How much pay do you want ? " 
 
 "Veil, I vill not be hard. Ve can agree, I 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 t ink. Can you pay me a little now ? Dot 
 will bind der bargain, my lawyer say." 
 
 " Come over into the canyon, and I will pay 
 you there." 
 
 " Good, good ! ve vill get on. I have always 
 tried to help you, as you vos a new settler j 
 and now you are going to oblige me." 
 
 The man had snatched his overcoat from the 
 wall, and was walking fast; the German ran 
 along at his side. 
 
 The road was a road of roses ; but the man 
 walked too fast to heed the roses, or even hear 
 the many friendly speeches which the garrulous 
 German was making from time to time, as he 
 came puffing on after him. 
 
 There was a big heap of stones on the high 
 summit just before descending the steep path 
 into the canyon. The sun was warm, hot. 
 He threw his heavy coat against the high mound 
 of stones under the olive-tree he had planted, 
 and hastened on, the German at his heels. 
 
 128 
 
XIII. Fallen by the Way 
 
 * How SHALL man surely save his soul ? " 
 T was sunset by the Jordan. Gates 
 Of light were closing, and the whole 
 
 Vast heaven hung darkened as the fates. 
 
 " How shall man surely save his soul "; he said, 
 
 As fell the kingly day, discrowned and dead. 
 
 The Christ said : "Hear this parable. 
 
 Two men set forth and journeyed fast 
 To reach a place ere darkness fell 
 
 And closed the gates ere they had passed ; 
 Two worthy men, each free alike of sin, 
 But one did seek most sure to enter in. 
 
 * And so when in their path did lay 
 
 A cripple with a broken staff, 
 The one did pass straight on his way, 
 
 While one did stoop and give the half 
 His strength, and all his time did nobly share 
 Till they at sunset saw their city fair. 
 
 * And he who would make sure ran fast 
 
 To reach the golden sunset gate, 
 Where captains and proud chariots passed, 
 
 But lo, he came one moment late ! 
 The gate was closed, and all night long he cried j 
 He cried and cried, but never watch replied. 
 
 " Meanwhile, the man who cared to save 
 
 Another as he would be saved 
 Came slowly on, gave bread and gave 
 
 Cool waters, and he stooped and laved 
 The wounds. At last, bent double with his weight, 
 He passed, unchid, the porter s private gate. 
 129 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " Hear then this lesson, hear and learn : 
 
 He who would save his soul, I say, 
 Must lose his soul ; must dare to turn 
 
 And lift the fallen by the way ; 
 Must make his soul worth saving by some deed 
 
 That grows, and grows, as grows to fruitful seed." 
 
 A 5 SAID before, the silent man with set lips 
 cast aside the coat on his arm as he 
 reached the rocky summit where he had planted 
 the olive-tree. It had flourished wonderfully. 
 As he hastily threw the coat beneath its beauti 
 ful green and gray and dove-colored branches 
 and hurried on down over the high, steep brow 
 of the hill he did not see the symbol of peace at 
 all. His eyes were blinded with rage. He led 
 on and on down the steep and wooded road to 
 the very bed of the canyon. 
 
 The robust German followed close at his 
 heels. His mind was full of speculation and 
 expectation. He had become convinced that 
 his neighbor, the dreamer, was entirely helpless ; 
 that his lands were surely slipping from his tired 
 hands ; that they must fall into the hands of 
 some one, and why not as well into his hands as 
 those of another ? 
 
 " Yes, down here in the deep canyon he will 
 make some concessions for the sake of peace, as 
 130 
 
Fallen by the Way 
 
 he always does, and as there will be no witness I 
 can fix it up to suit myself. And he, of course, 
 will consent to whatever I say, for the sake of 
 peace. Let me see, I must have a little money 
 to bind the bargain ; a little spot cash, if only 
 one dollar, to bind the bargain, my lawyer 
 say " Thus, in plain English, ran his thought. 
 
 The big man s calculations were suddenly 
 interrupted. They had reached the dense red 
 wood grove at the bottom of the canyon, when 
 the dreamer wheeled sharply about. His back 
 was to the largest of the stately redwood-trees ; 
 and his face only a few feet from that of his 
 robust neighbor. 
 
 The peaceful brook purled and rattled along 
 in its bed of rocks and pebbles, birds sang 
 pleasantly from the further hillside in the 
 sun, but all else was silent. The place was 
 as secure from intrusion as a country church 
 yard. 
 
 The man drew in his breath sharp and quick 
 and said hastily, between his teeth : 
 
 " You are well to-day ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes, never so veil ; but I vos varm. 
 I puts on my coat, so I not take cold." 
 131 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " No ! you will not take cold. You will not 
 have time to take cold ! " 
 
 u Vy, vat do you mean ? " 
 
 " What do I mean ? I told you I would pay 
 you, settle with you, here in the canyon, and I 
 intend to keep my word. Hear me ! Jesus 
 said Turn the other cheek/ Well, I turned the 
 other cheek, you smote that also. And now I 
 am going to smite you. I am going to smite 
 you, hip and thigh, from Dan to Beersheba ! " 
 
 The German was not dull ; neither was he 
 a coward. He saw that there was battle in the 
 eye of his outraged neighbor, and in a second he 
 threw his coat aside and prepared to meet it like 
 a man. 
 
 With right foot forward and his big, red fists 
 in rest, he awaited the onset. But his neighbor 
 was not now in such great haste. There was a 
 pause, and the German, who really knew him 
 self all along to have been terribly in the wrong, 
 took quick occasion to say, " Is dees your Ser 
 mon on de Mount ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes, it is. For I have read it over and 
 over since I read it to you, and I find it is writ 
 ten there that you shall not give that which is 
 132 
 
Fallen by the Way 
 
 holy unto dogs, nor cast pearls before swine." 
 It was too much, that peculiarly personal 
 accent given the allusion to the low creatures 
 named ; and the German, suddenly blinded with 
 rage, struck out terribly with his big, red, right 
 fist. 
 
 He was a huge man, nearly twice the weight 
 of his neighbor, and not so old. But he had not 
 spent the past five years in wrestling with the 
 elements on a mountain side. His had been a 
 sedentary life in the city ; and so his first blow, 
 which spent its force above the mark, as he 
 stood on ground higher than that of his sinewy 
 opponent, was his last. But he forced the fight 
 ing like a good German soldier as he was, and 
 bore down heavily on the man, who stood with 
 his back to the tree, and at last, by sheer weight 
 and force, he bore him to the ground. 
 
 But, as in the story of old, the earth came to 
 the rescue. The dear old mother earth, whom 
 he had loved and on whose bosom he had rested, 
 or wrought in forms of beauty for years past, 
 came to his help as she came to the help of the 
 shepherd king of old. He sprang to his feet 
 with renewed life. The German again stood 
 133 
 
"The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 before him, formidable indeed to look upon, but 
 almost breathless. 
 
 Thud ! thump ! thud ! The first landed with 
 terrific force on the big man s big throat. His 
 head was thrown back by the blow, and before 
 he could recover the first was followed by the 
 second, and the second by the third on the same 
 unguarded column. 
 
 The big, red fists fell to the big man s side. 
 The big mouth opened and the big man gasped 
 helplessly, but could not even find breath to cry 
 out for mercy. The battle was over. 
 
 " Come, now, and be washed ; then go and tell 
 your Dutch and Irish friends that it was poison- 
 oak. What! Do you want more? Come! and 
 be decent about it, or I 11 thresh you till you do." 
 
 The big man had held back as disdaining to 
 accept help from his enemy ; but the other man 
 would not be trifled with now, the rage of bat 
 tle was on him ; and so, accepting the outreach- 
 ing hand of help, he suffered himself to be led 
 down to the pretty little brook, over which he 
 bowed his big head, gasping and gasping for 
 breath, and was washed as if he had been a new 
 born babe. 
 
 J 34 
 
Fallen by the Way 
 
 Pretty soon he stood erect, then he stooped 
 over, washed his face with his own hands and 
 then rose up and slowly wiped his face and his 
 hands with his handkerchief. 
 
 At last, lifting his head, he looked his neigh 
 bor full in the face as he reached his right hand. 
 The other took it and shook it heartily. 
 
 " Dot s all right ; you cuts down vot you 
 likes." 
 
 With this the German gathered up his coat 
 and took his way down the canyon toward his 
 home. 
 
 The city-builder looked after him, his heart 
 bursting with shame and humiliation. He want 
 ed to run after him, to bring him back, to beg 
 his pardon, to beg his pardon on his knees. But 
 the chill and damp of twilight soon began to 
 creep into his bones, and he slowly ascended to 
 the olive-tree on the high hilltop where he had 
 thrown aside his coat. He gathered the garment 
 about his chilled shoulders, and too weary to go 
 further, he lay with his face to the dust. He 
 had never been so entirely miserable in all his 
 miserable life. 
 
 How continually he had taught all men the 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 wisdom, the duty, the beauty of turning the 
 other cheek ! and yet, here he had gone down 
 to the low and bestial level of a poor, ignorant 
 foreigner and fought and fought as a dog might 
 fight. 
 
 True, he had been tempted, terribly tempted ; 
 but he had fallen so low, so foolishly, that he 
 could now no longer hold up his head or have 
 the heart to go forward with his lessons of love 
 and beauty and duty at all. 
 
 He lay there on his face, and he felt that 
 surely the end of all his hopes and aspirations 
 had come. 
 
 In his despair his thoughts kept continually 
 turning to her, Miriam. Where was she ? 
 What had he done that she had not kept her 
 promise ? Five years had swept by. He had 
 missed her presence, her calm counsel, serene 
 wisdom, so much all the time ; and as hope 
 began to falter, and all things to fall away 
 from him, he had come to think of her con 
 tinually and to wish for her or death. u I will 
 come to you sometime." And now that he 
 needed her so entirely his soul went out to 
 her entirely, a poor, lone dove on the deluge 
 136 
 
Fallen by the Way 
 
 of waters, that found no place for the sole 
 of its foot. 
 
 He lay there on the heights in the gathering 
 night, and, as his heart went out to her, he 
 continually repeated : " I will come to you 
 sometime " ; and then he murmured : " Lead 
 us not into temptation ! Lead us not into 
 temptation ! " 
 
 137 
 
XIV. Under the Olive-Trees 
 
 THOSE shining leaves that lisped and shook 
 All darkness from them, sensate leaves 
 
 In Nature s never-ending book j 
 
 Leaves full of truth as garnered sheaves 
 
 That hold till seed-time fruitful seed, 
 
 To grow as grows some small, good deed. 
 
 How strangely and how vastly still ! 
 
 The harvest moon hung low and large, 
 And drew across the dreamful hill 
 
 Like some huge star-bound, freighted barge ; 
 Some strange, new, neighbor-world it surely seemed, 
 The while he gazed and dreamed, yet scarcely dreamed. 
 
 THE poor, discouraged dreamer under the 
 little olive-tree on the high peak above 
 the sea was so very sore in soul, and so very 
 sore in body, too ! He could have borne with 
 the last ; but the two together made him earn 
 estly wish to die and leave it all with the one 
 word " Failure " for his epitaph. 
 
 After a time the ever-welcome winds, warm 
 and balmy as with a healing balm, blew in and 
 on and away down toward the Mexican seas 
 from Japan. 
 
 " Oh that I had the wings of the dove, to 
 fly away and be at rest ! " he sighed piteously, 
 138 
 
Under the Olive-Trees 
 
 as the warm, strong winds went on by, bearing 
 their snow-white fleets and happy voyagers. 
 Surely, these clouds that drove dreamily about, 
 above, were mighty ships that bore sweet souls 
 bound heavenward. 
 
 From the city and the mountain-side below 
 him came up the song and the melody of closing 
 day. Still further below, many and many a 
 church spire pierced the warm, white clouds that 
 blew in from the sea and drew softly through the 
 tree-tops above the city. The sound of church 
 bells came up to him through the world of clouds; 
 came up to him there under the little olive-tree, 
 as if they had lost their way, as he had lost his 
 way, there on the stony steeps of his mountain. 
 
 Beyond all this the bosom of the great bay of 
 San Francisco rose and fell with the sea of seas, 
 and gleamed and glistened and gloried in the face 
 of God as if a living thing. 
 
 At the Golden Gate, without, the great sea, 
 with its hundred thousand white-clad choristers, 
 the sea doves, sang and shrieked and shrieked 
 and sang. 
 
 A huge sea-lion from the seal rocks beyond 
 the city of San Francisco rose out of the sea, 
 139 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 climbed to the top of his crag, and there lifted 
 his bearded face straight up in the air,and mouthed 
 his doleful monotone till it rolled and rose above 
 the clang of the church-bells and above the songs 
 of the hundred thousand white-clad singers of 
 the sea of seas. 
 
 And still the soft and balmy winds came in 
 continually with their warmth and healing from 
 the dreamful seas of Japan. 
 
 But the man under the olive-tree was miserable, 
 utterly miserable, for all this melody, all this har 
 mony of sea and song, this harmony of heaven 
 and earth. 
 
 " Oh, why may I not build a ship of clouds 
 and launch it on this strong, sweet current that 
 flows in so steadily from Japan ? Surely, surely 
 science might make a ship to sail these mighty 
 streams of the upper world ! Why, men have 
 been sailing their helpless little air-ships in the 
 valley, from little town towers for centuries ; but 
 who has dared these brave, big currents that keep 
 place in heaven like mighty rivers which turn 
 not to the right nor left, but keep straight on ? 
 Surely, when the great navigator comes he will 
 launch his stately ships upon these strong and 
 140 
 
Under the Olive-Trees 
 
 steady currents. Man has kept his face to the 
 ground in quest of gold ; but some day, some 
 great and good and really wise Columbus will 
 come, and will launch his ships here on these 
 strong, swift, sweet currents of Japan, and sail 
 to the undiscovered continents of heaven." 
 
 Such were the weary and desolate man s 
 dreamful and confused thoughts as he lay there 
 wrapped in the large solemnity of gathering 
 night. Meantime, the countless belts and curves 
 and crescents of electric-lights leaped suddenly 
 into existence and climbed to the top of mount 
 ains beyond the city of San Francisco. The 
 stars had stood there but a moment before. 
 Now, one could not tell where the lights left 
 off or the stars began. 
 
 The gorgeous and flaming star of Mars had 
 hung just above the grand and indescribably 
 pathetic figure of " Our Mother of Pain," at 
 whose feet the pious and patient men of God, a 
 full century before, had built their holy little 
 temple, the Mission Dolores. 
 
 A strangely brilliant little star was settling 
 down, down, down, straight between the lifted 
 breasts of the Holy Virgin where they lift per- 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 petually, as in the piteous agonies of motherhood. 
 
 The man s racked and wearied senses wan 
 dered now, and grew confused with the sea of 
 lights in which his star lay drowning at the feet 
 of Our Mother of Sorrows. For now the face 
 and figure of the most divinely glorious being 
 ever seen seemed to be dimly limned out before 
 him ; and the Star of Bethlehem was in her 
 wondrous night of hair. It was she ! Miriam ! 
 that wondrous woman of Jerusalem and of 
 Egypt! "I will come to you sometime/ She 
 had come. 
 
 And a ship was there ! Was it but a cloud ? 
 Surely there was no mistaking the fact of the 
 strong and steady stream from Japan. 
 
 It seemed to him that no word had been said 
 as he arose from under the olive-tree, entered the 
 ship, and so sailed on and on and on. They 
 sailed by the porch of heaven. It was pavilioned 
 with stars, propped with fearful arches formed of 
 uncompleted worlds. 
 
 They sailed beneath the Milky Way, that 
 
 seemed as some great arch above a surging 
 
 river. They sailed amid the stars, above the 
 
 drowning moon, above all storms and counter- 
 
 142 
 
Under the O live-Threes 
 
 storms; and the mighty river which, like the 
 Gulf Stream, girdles the world, swept on and 
 on and on. 
 
 Black and white and storm-tossed clouds were 
 banked below or heaped on either side. These 
 seas and shores of tumbled clouds were bed and 
 banks of this awful Gulf Stream of the upper 
 world, on whose strong and certain currents the 
 air-ship sailed and sailed and sailed. 
 
 It was full morning when he landed ; and he 
 was alone. The ship had rested on a pine-set 
 mountain-top. A vast valley lay below. In 
 the center of this valley, sand-sown and tawny 
 as a desert of Africa all about its borders, lay 
 gleaming like silver in the morning sun a city of 
 indescribable splendor and magnitude. 
 
 Almost overcome with awe and wonder, the 
 man descended from the car, keeping his eyes 
 fixed on the far-off city amid its groves in the 
 heart of the tawny desert. 
 
 Descending through the pines a little distance 
 down a well-worn road, he came to a small sta 
 tion. A man approached him, but he kept 
 turning about to look for the silent and serenely 
 beautiful Madonna, who had accompanied him 
 143 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 in the glorious voyage above the world. He 
 saw her not, and was sad. 
 
 Olive-trees, orange-trees, birds, bees, blos 
 soms a railroad depot in the midst of all this, 
 and yet all things so like one perpetual Sunday. 
 It was as quiet, as restful, as flowery here as the 
 entrance of some gorgeous church on some 
 Easter Sunday, as if the people were waiting 
 for the minister to come in. Yes, there was the 
 music, and such music ! No shrieking, soul- 
 tearing sounds sounds in combat, notes in 
 battle, notes at war with notes such as dis 
 tract the civilized (?) earth from end to end ; no 
 sickening smells and other abominations that 
 hold high carnival at the average depot in the 
 outer world. 
 
 Peace, peace, peace ! Melody, poetry, Para 
 dise ! 
 
 And yet, this was surely all on the solid earth j 
 for the man who came forward and touched his 
 cap to the stranger was gray about the temples. 
 Surely he, at least, had not yet done with time. 
 People were coming and people were going, just 
 as elsewhere ; old people and young people, 
 plain and beautiful. 
 
 144 
 
Under the Olive-Trees 
 
 " The train starts exactly on the hour. You 
 see that you have time to take your seat for the 
 city." 
 
 The hand indicated a high tower where a 
 great clock hung above the few, brief rules, the 
 set times for coming and going. 
 
 As the stranger took his seat he could not 
 help missing those ever-present lies that are set 
 up in any depot on earth : " Shortest route ! " 
 " Only safe line ! " " Quickest and cheapest 
 line to the city." 
 
 In fact, as he looked out through the car, 
 for the cars were made of malleable glass, trans 
 parent as air and indestructible as brass (one of 
 the lost arts restored), he could not but note 
 the entire absence of the decorative advertise 
 ments. 
 
 The shapely clock-tower, with its girdles of 
 brass and its sides of broad bronze, was a goodly 
 place for " posters," too. 
 
 But these unenterprising people had not even 
 put up a sign to say that space on this tower for 
 advertising purposes was to be had cheaper than 
 on any other clock-tower on the road. 
 
 Without a word or sound or sign from any 
 
 JO I 45 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 one save from the clock in the tower and the 
 little clocks at the end of each car that indicated 
 not only the time, but the name of each station, 
 they glided out and they glided on. 
 
 Inquiring of a pleasant-faced priest at his side, 
 he learned, to his great relief for he had 
 neither scrip nor purse that as the roads all 
 belonged to the people, the people did not take 
 tribute of themselves nor of the stranger within 
 their gates who came to honor them with his 
 presence. 
 
 " I have surely been here before," said the 
 man at last, as if to himself, while he sat look 
 ing out upon the beautiful groves and roads of 
 roses and bananas and wooded and watered parks, 
 through which the swift and silent cars continu 
 ally descended. 
 
 " If you will allow me," began the kindly 
 monk, " that is a matter, the idea of having 
 been here before, which we have under deep 
 consideration." 
 
 " Will you explain ? " 
 
 " Certainly. Meditative people are almost 
 constantly seeing something in this life that they 
 say they have surely seen before ; and that some- 
 146 
 
Under the Olive-Trees 
 
 thing is always something beautiful or grand or 
 inspiring, appealing to the best that is in us. 
 And this, some of us, at least, take to be one of 
 the tangible and visible evidences of immortality. 
 This, some of us hold to be pretty clear evi 
 dence that we not only shall live hereafter, but 
 that we have lived long, long before. No, no, 
 my son, you have never looked on this scene in 
 this life, previous to this ; for it is all very new. 
 But it may be that somewhere else, in some 
 other world, or at least in some other life, you, 
 in a happy moment of harmony with all things, 
 saw something very like this, under restful and 
 harmonious conditions very like to these," said 
 the priest, thoughtfully. 
 
 The stranger was dumb with wonder and 
 delight. He had at last and for the first time 
 since leaving the lady of Jerusalem by the Nile 
 come into an atmosphere of thought in which 
 his soul if not his body had been born from the 
 first. He lifted his hat and sat uncovered in 
 silence. Cottages, fields of corn, cane, cotton, 
 a lane of banana-trees shut out the sun from the 
 gliding palaces of glass all along now. 
 
 " And all this, you tell me, was only an arid 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 sea of gleaming sand and baked mud a few years 
 ago ? " 
 
 " Certainly ; we at first found rain hard to 
 produce ; but we had been prudent enough to 
 bring with us something better than the natural 
 storms of rain, intelligence, and a colony of 
 scientific men and women. We now have rain 
 whenever it is needed, but never when it is not 
 needed." 
 
 " Indeed ! And such cars ! " 
 
 "Yes," said the priest, " we make glass houses, 
 railway ties, railway tracks, and railway cars, as 
 you see here, out of the sands." 
 
 " And they never break ? " 
 
 " Glass is not only elastic, as all know, but 
 glass, by our redemption of a lost art, is made as 
 malleable as gold or copper." 
 
 It is hardly known what more the priest said 
 or might have said, as they glided on down 
 under the broad banana-trees ; for just then the 
 stranger caught a glimpse of a party gathering 
 bananas. They were girls, up in the trees 
 among the birds, buried in the broad leaves, an 
 arm thrusting up after the yellow fruit, a brown 
 limb thrusting out below, drawn back, bound 
 148 
 
Under the Olive-Trees 
 
 around and twined about a branch to hold fast ! 
 Ah ! he forgot that a priest was within a thous 
 and miles of him. 
 
 Many stations, many short stops, then on and 
 on through the continuous and seemingly end 
 less lane of laden trees. 
 
 At one of the little, leafy stations the priest 
 put forth his hand and received from a pretty 
 Indian girl two yellow bananas. They were 
 like yellow ears of corn, so large were they. 
 And such flavor ! 
 
 " The world, the outside commercial world," 
 said the priest as he handed one to the stranger, 
 " has never yet tasted a banana. Those wild 
 things, gathered green by savages of the Cannibal 
 Islands and thrown into the holds of sailing ves 
 sels to rot and ripen, ripen and rot, are not 
 bananas. They are disease. They are death, 
 death for little children, old people, young peo 
 ple, all people." 
 
 At last they glided over a glass bridge that 
 spanned a bent lagoon. The central railway 
 station, where they now stopped and from which 
 all tracks, trains, pneumatic tubes, airship-lines, 
 and even streets and highways ran, was simply 
 149 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 a palace, a glorious palace of glass, blue above 
 as the sky is blue ; and under foot the solid 
 earth, snow-white sand, with fountains bursting 
 up through, blossoming trees, and birds in every 
 tree, and a song in the throat of every bird ; for 
 all things were so beautiful and all things were 
 so happy the birds could but sing always. 
 
 150 
 
XV. As When The Christ Shall 
 Come Again 
 
 FROM out the golden doors of dawn 
 
 The wise men came, of wondrous thought, 
 
 Who knew the stars. From far upon 
 The shoreless East they kneeling brought 
 
 Their costly gifts of inwrought gems and gold, 
 
 While cloudlike incense from their presence rolled. 
 
 Their sweet of flower-fields, their sweet 
 
 Distilments of most sacred leaves 
 They laid, low-bending, at His feet, 
 
 As reapers bend above their sheaves 
 As strong-armed reapers bending clamorous 
 To gather golden full sheaves kneeling thus. 
 
 And kneeling so, they spake of when 
 
 God walked His garden s sacred sod, 
 Nor yet had hid His face from men, 
 
 Nor yet had man forgotten God. 
 They spake. But Mary kept her thought apart 
 And, silent, " pondered all things in her heart." 
 
 They spake in whispers long, they laid 
 
 Their shaggy heads together, drew 
 Some stained scrolls breathless forth, then made 
 
 Such speech as only wise men knew, 
 Their high, red camels on the huge hill set 
 Outstanding, like some night-hewn silhouette. 
 
 THE stranger was hungry, more than hun 
 gry, he was famishing. The good priest 
 knew this, knew it not from words, maybe, 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 not from look, act, or utterance. But so sensi 
 tive and refined had these people grown here, 
 even in a few years of meditation and unselfish 
 ness, that they really knew the thoughts and 
 feelings of one another, as dumb horses, dogs 
 and other lower animals know our desires and 
 designs. More of this, however, later on. 
 
 Over and across a wide, snow-white, sand- 
 sown avenue of orange-trees, where no cart, car, 
 carriage, or any other rumbling nuisance could 
 pass, the good priest led to a public restaurant 
 by a great fountain. 
 
 " Not being a strong man," he began as they 
 sat down, " I chose the duties of a waiter when 
 I came, and I serve my two hours of daily toil 
 here. However, my toil, I regret to say, must 
 come to an end next year, as I shall then be sixty. 
 This man who will wait on us now is a young 
 Methodist clergyman, or rather he was a Method 
 ist clergyman. But as all roads run in together 
 as we approach any one city or center of any sort, 
 so here, as we attain peace and approach some 
 thing nearer the common center of more perfect 
 life, we find all religions running in together. 
 We are all walking along so nearly together here, 
 15* 
 
As When The Christ Shall Come Again 
 
 in fact, that we can and do touch hands across 
 the narrow and dim little lines that divide us." 
 
 " Well, well, well ! and you say you, a not 
 very strong man, will lay aside the menial em 
 ployment of a common servant, or waiter, at the 
 age of sixty, with regret ? " 
 
 " Certainly. I really and truly like to serve. 
 If Christ could wash his disciples feet, might I 
 not give bread to a hungry man ; or even wash 
 a hungry man s plate ? " 
 
 The stranger held his peace a moment, and 
 then, as the choice repast was served, ate in silent 
 amazement as the priest continued : 
 
 " But of course I cannot be idle. After 
 reaching sixty years I must begin to hold office j 
 so I shall be required to serve the Republic many 
 years still, if I live. In fact, no man or woman 
 who lives long enough can hardly escape serving 
 a term as president." 
 
 u May I be permitted to know the mystery of 
 it all ? " 
 
 ct There is no mystery at all. Mystery there 
 may be in other republics, where presidents and 
 often thousands of other officers are chosen by 
 man s popular voice, but not so here. God, 
 
Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 Nature, elects our every officer. You see, any 
 one coming here from the outer world, and all 
 who are born here, are registered, age, occu 
 pation, and so on. Well, every one attaining 
 the age of seventy becomes a senator, and the 
 oldest persons in the Senate comprise the Coun 
 cil. The oldest of these is president, and is 
 usually a person of eighty ; for we live in the 
 full enjoyment of all our faculties at least ten 
 years longer than in the outside world, where the 
 brain and body are strained and strung till they 
 break from the very tension." 
 
 " And then you have no elections at all ? " 
 
 " Yes, the election of Nature ; the choice of 
 God." 
 
 The stranger shook his head at this intensely 
 democratic proposition. 
 
 u I see you do not entirely approve of leaving 
 the election to God. You fear that some bad 
 or foolish man may by this means attain the 
 head of government. Listen to me. Does not 
 the Declaration of Independence of a certain 
 great nation assert that all men are born free 
 and equal ? Now, if we are born equal, how is 
 it that we become so unequal as we go forward 
 54 
 
As When The Christ Shall Come Again 
 
 in the great outer world ? Why, you see some 
 are hit, hit hard in the hot and bitter battle of 
 life. Wrong, insult, oppression, hard work, hun 
 ger, ay, hunger, hunger of body and soul, 
 these things dwarf, break down the very best 
 and finest of you. And so it is that you in the 
 outer world, with your lawyers, your politicians, 
 your idle parsons and your idle priests, your lying 
 money-lenders and land-agents, your oppressive 
 middle-men, eleven idle and scheming men to 
 the one slave at work, one man working ten, 
 fifteen, twenty hours, if he can stand up under 
 it Ah me ! no wonder that man succeeds, 
 with all this evil and ill-doing, in making une 
 qual that which God made equal." 
 
 They had risen and passed out into the street. 
 The stranger was full of wonder, and entirely 
 silent with awe and admiration. And yet he 
 could not help recalling the fact that he had 
 somewhere, far back in life, heard much of this 
 which was being uttered here. His mind went 
 back to a voyage up the Nile, to a night amid 
 the ruins of fearful Karnak, to the glory and the 
 serene beauty of a pathetic and splendid face 
 there. His soul went out continually to the 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 grand and silent woman who had come to him 
 in the clouds only the night before and had car 
 ried him away and out of his world of cares, out 
 of himself, to this, her world. 
 
 " You are thinking of her ? " 
 
 " Of whom ? " 
 
 "Well, no matter about her name. Let us 
 say our guardian angel. I am desirous of lead 
 ing you to her. Shall we proceed directly to 
 her, or wait till to-morrow ? To-morrow were 
 better." 
 
 " At once, please God, at once ! " cried the 
 man, with clasped hands, as he saw the kindly 
 man hesitate. 
 
 " You need rest." 
 
 " Indeed, indeed, I do not need rest. I am 
 strong as a lion. I need only her to see her." 
 
 A shade of concern and deep sadness swept 
 over the sensitive priest s face, as if he had some 
 thing in his mind which he hesitated to tell. At 
 last he said : 
 
 " Yes, yes, you are strong." 
 
 " And she she, my Madonna, Miriam she 
 is not strong ? " 
 
 " Far, far from strong, my son." 
 156 
 
As When The Christ Shall Come Again 
 
 The priest s head was on his breast as he 
 spoke. Then lifting his face he said pleasantly : 
 
 " But she forbids all sadness on this score, and 
 so I must obey her and be cheerful." 
 
 " But I may see her to-night ? " 
 
 " To-morrow, my son, to-morrow." 
 
 157 
 
XVI. Behold, The City Beautiful! 
 
 THE SUN lay molten in the sea 
 Of sand, and all the sea was rolled 
 In one broad, bright intensity 
 Of gold and gold and gold and gold. 
 
 THE rosy fingers of morning reached out 
 of heaven, laid aside night s somber man 
 tle from the mountain-tops and lightly touched 
 the tawny bosom of the desert, a vision of inde 
 scribable splendor rose up from the far-off levels 
 of boundless yellow sands to the east. 
 
 Golden sunlight and glittering yellow sands 
 were warp and woof, and all woven into one. 
 You could not say which was sunlight and which 
 was sea, which was gold or golden sun. 
 
 But the miracle of it all was the forest of 
 spires, minarets, towers, pyramids, obelisks and 
 the like that rose, a mirage, above the levels of 
 the desert. The cross, the crescent, the fire- 
 worshiper s glowing signs of the rising sun, all 
 were here in amazing magnitude ; and all in 
 gorgeous glory and harmony of form and color. 
 
 Far away they seemed, like the dim and dist- 
 158 
 
Behold, The City Beautiful! 
 
 ant outlines of some glorious New Jerusalem, or 
 an inspired dream of a prophet of God in Israel. 
 
 "Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful! Oh, that 
 is indeed my dream of the City Beautiful ! 
 Would to God it could be real ! " sighed the 
 man as he turned away his eyes a moment to 
 rest them from the splendid sight. 
 
 " It is all real," said the priest, gently. He had 
 come in with the sun to see what he might do to 
 serve the stranger; for here there was no occasion 
 for locks or closed doors, for clerks or call-boys. 
 
 " All real ? That, that all real ? Then you 
 found the City of the Sun on coming to this 
 wilderness. You surely found one of the fabled 
 cities of gold that the daring Spaniard searched 
 for so persistently," said the man, as he turned 
 again and looked upon the glorious spectacle. 
 
 u No, we built it all. We still are building ; 
 for our work is only begun." 
 
 The man threw out his hand and caught the 
 priest desperately by the arm. 
 
 " Let me go back to the hard realities of my 
 rocks, for I shall go mad if I see more of these 
 splendid visions, and then after all have to waken 
 and see them fade to nothing." 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 The priest sat down beside him, holding him 
 tenderly by the hand which had been thrown out 
 so wildly toward him. 
 
 " I assert it is all real," he said. " You see, 
 at first, when we came and settled here where 
 the old Toltec ruins lay, we had not progressed 
 in science so far as we now have. Then our 
 learned men had not emancipated themselves, 
 and so were busy breaking the shackles ; and 
 then it took time to experiment and give full 
 play and practice to their designs. But now 
 they can build a city in the desert almost in a 
 day." 
 
 The stranger looked at the priest a moment 
 hard and steadily. A gentle and reassuring 
 pressure of the hand was his only answer. 
 Finally the priest said : 
 
 " If you will look toward the right of the 
 loftiest obelisk you will see a most stately pyra 
 mid. That was the first thing built by their new 
 process, as a sort of experiment." 
 
 The man looked, and beheld what seemed to 
 him a pyramid more noble than that of Cheops. 
 The priest went on : 
 
 "Of course there was nothing new in this 
 160 
 
Behold, The City Beautiful! 
 
 building a pyramid out of desert sands. This 
 was rather an acknowledgment to the Egyptians. 
 We claim only to have restored a lost art." 
 
 " How, what ? " 
 
 The man had hastily pressed the fingers of his 
 left hand hard against his burning forehead ; for 
 a strange and sudden thought had pierced his 
 brain. The priest continued : 
 
 " There must have been great inundations of 
 sand from Sahara in the olden time. And this 
 sand had to be disposed of. They could not 
 continually pour it into the Nile, and so they 
 cemented it and built the pyramids out of it, 
 yes, carried it up on their backs, perhaps, and 
 there fused and cemented and melted it into 
 shapely blocks as they desired by the use of 
 chemicals. And so they got rid of the sand and 
 had the shapely pyramids to look upon and 
 perpetuate the story of the lost arts of immortal 
 and glorious old Egypt." 
 
 By this time the man had laid his left hand on 
 the hand of the priest which held his own. But 
 he was too eager to listen, and to learn, to do 
 more than this, or to even move his lips. 
 
 u But," continued the priest with enthusiasm, 
 
 ii 161 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " our scientists have done more than restore this 
 lost art in the building of cities. There are no 
 beasts of burthen here as in Egypt. In freedom, 
 where men can really follow their natural and 
 wholesome desires, labor is free to choose its 
 vocation and its hours. Necessity does not force 
 a man to do the most menial work. The hard 
 est toiler gets the best pay with us, and the pleas- 
 antest tasks the lightest pay. This naturally 
 leads to the employment of science to make 
 labor s tasks light and pleasant, rather than 
 merely profitable to the employer. I spoke of 
 the fusing of sand with chemicals. Well, now, 
 an elevator is not a pretty thing, nor a poetical 
 thing, nor is it quite what I mean ; but if you 
 keep in your mind the idea of an elevator, such 
 as is used in the loading of wheat, you will have 
 some idea of the way in which we gather up 
 sand from the desert and carry it to the tops 
 of our tallest edifices, and then melt it into 
 column and spire and dome, as readily and 
 easily as you can write your name in the sand 
 with a walking-stick." 
 
 The man turned his face once more to look 
 at tower and tomb, minaret, cross, crescent, and 
 162 
 
Behold, The City Beautiful! 
 
 all the numberless works before him under the 
 glowing sun, in the buildings of the City Beau 
 tiful. With grateful heart he cried : 
 
 " And the desert shall blossom as the rose. 
 
 " The desert," said the priest, u is the place 
 for the rose. The only real place for the rose is 
 in the fervid sands of the desert. Warm sands 
 above, artesian water below, and you have such 
 roses as the world has not seen since the Garden 
 of Eden. As for cities, we simply could not 
 build, never could have built, as we have built, 
 but for this beautiful sea of desert sand." 
 
 " I observe that you have the symbols of all 
 religions," said the man, meditatively, after 
 looking once more far out and under the newly- 
 risen sun." 
 
 " No, we have but one religion." 
 
 u Then why do I see all these various sym 
 bols ? " 
 
 u These are but harmonies and traditions, 
 histories in the air." 
 
 " Then what is this one religion, pray ? " 
 
 The priest was silent for a long time, still 
 holding to both the hands that had been thrust 
 with eager inquiry into his. At last he said : 
 163 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " I should like to coin a new word. I should 
 like to find some fusing and melting chemical, 
 such as they use out yonder in melting and fus 
 ing together the sands in building temples and 
 shrines in all religions. But I am not cunning 
 in speech. Let me say, then, that our one 
 religion is to love truth, to love country, to do 
 good." 
 
 " And what, then, do you worship ? " 
 
 Again the good priest was a long time silent. 
 He looked down to the floor and then up and 
 out and far away. At last he said slowly, hum 
 bly, and hardly above his breath : 
 
 " We worship Truth, Duty, Beauty. Blend 
 these three, this trinity and all religions together, 
 as they blend yonder sands, and then call it God. 
 We worship that GOD." 
 
 164 
 
XVII. In Her Presence at Last 
 
 HE WALKED the world with bended head. 
 " There is no thing," he moaning said, 
 " That must not some day join the dead." 
 
 He sat where rolled a river deep ; 
 A woman sat her down to weep ; 
 A child lay in her lap asleep. 
 
 The waters touched the mother s hand. 
 He blessed the babe. He passed from land, 
 But left it laughing in the sand. 
 
 That one kind word, that one good deed, 
 Was as if you should plant a seed 
 In sand along death s sable brede. 
 
 And looking from the farther shore 
 
 He saw, where he had sat before, 
 
 A light that grew, grew more and more. 
 
 He saw a growing, glowing throng 
 Of happy people white and strong 
 With faith, and jubilant with song. 
 
 It grew and grew, this little seed 
 Of good sown in that day of need, 
 Until it touched the stars indeed ! 
 
 And then the old man smiling said, 
 With youthful heart and lifted head, 
 " No good deed ever joins the dead." 
 I6 5 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 l I ^HE world is too much with us." We must 
 A turn back to some of the old beliefs. 
 We can t get to heaven on a railroad car, no 
 matter how fast it runs. O my preachers, this 
 railroad leveling of all things is terrible, mons 
 trous ; for it is making monsters of men, level 
 ing them down so that their roads can cross over 
 all religion into heaven. You have explained 
 away the parable of the rich man down in hell. 
 
 My friend, who was this Jesus Christ ? There 
 was but one Christ, a poor carpenter, who said : 
 " Sell all that thou hast and distribute unto the 
 poor, and come, follow me." But you are preach 
 ing another Christ entirely. 
 
 Several times Spain arose and turned out the 
 priests who had got hold of the gold. I implore 
 you, teach the true Christ. Tell your splendid 
 paymasters that the people can rise up as easily 
 as of old and turn the rich people out, as the rich 
 priests were turned out. They can even go out, 
 out in the wilderness as the Jews went out, and 
 build new worlds, if their taskmasters continue 
 to oppress them. 
 
 As the priest and the stranger approached her 
 166 
 
In Her Presence at Last 
 
 wide-open door under the olive-trees, she came 
 forward to meet them. 
 
 The same ardent sincerity, the same eloquence 
 of silence on her pale and passionless lips ! Ah, 
 how pale she was ! Her once black hair had 
 whitened with her beautiful face. The care, 
 toil, endurance of other days had taxed her ter 
 ribly. She was now paying that tax with her 
 precious life. And yet, she was so beautiful 
 still ! But it was the beauty of the grand old 
 battlements of Rome in the moonlight, the 
 majestic and mighty ruin of Karnak on the Nile 
 at night. 
 
 Her great, pathetic eyes looked at the stranger 
 as if looking out from another world for a 
 moment, and then she threw her two hands out 
 as if throwing them across the years that had 
 rolled between them. The years were spanned, 
 swept aside, and the two were as of old. 
 
 The priest went on his way without words. 
 There are times, and they are very frequent, 
 when words are an impertinence. 
 
 People here, as in other parts of the semi- 
 tropics, did not live in houses much. With 
 out a word she slowly led out and along by 
 167 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 the fountains and trees where the birds sang. 
 
 There were no servants, indeed no noise or 
 friction of any sort anywhere. It seemed as 
 though he had at last found a land on earth that 
 had some sense of heaven. Here it seemed as 
 if it were one eternal Sabbath. And right and 
 left, up and down the long wooded and watered 
 streets, people were coming and people were 
 going ; pausing now to speak to one another in 
 a soft and restful fashion, lingering to listen, 
 turning about to catch a last look or word, but 
 that was all ; there was no haste, and the chat 
 tering was all left to the birds. 
 
 Passing on and up and around through lanes 
 of perfumed woods, by sparkling fountains and 
 pleasant porches, they came to the summit, or, 
 rather, the center, where the great trout-pools 
 bubbled and boiled up through the massive 
 blocks and broken ruins of some prehistoric 
 Toltec city. She paused here to rest a moment, 
 and turned to look below. She put out her 
 hand. He comprehended her thought. 
 
 She had indeed built a city, her City Beautiful 
 in the desert. This, where they stood, was the 
 hub of a wheel; in every direction ran the 
 1 68 
 
In Her Presence at Last 
 
 spokes ; at the tips of the spokes and far out 
 and around at the foot of the mountains ran a 
 track of glass, around which cars of glass kept 
 gliding, as spiders glide along, around and over 
 their own little world of curious and intricate 
 web, in silence and harmonious perfection. 
 
 " But the title-deeds to it all ? The world 
 will come this way some day, and then " 
 
 " Ah, that I have provided for. You are a 
 dreamer, I am a builder. You are of heaven, 
 but I am only of earth. I bought the whole 
 fifty leagues of desert for a small sum. And 
 so you see I have in this, at least, lived up to 
 the Lord s Prayer : c Lead us not into tempta 
 tion J ; for no man will be tempted to try to take 
 this land from us. I, in turn, have given all, by 
 irrevocable will, to our people. There is not a 
 human being here, from the priest who brought 
 you here to the babe born within this hour, who 
 is not a full partner in all the real interests of 
 this city of the desert. We have no disinherited. 
 The coming together of my people does not 
 enrich some without toil. The landless do not 
 pay tribute to the landlords. All are equal 
 owners in natural and social values. 
 169 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " The curse of all society is the grant 
 ing of special privileges which are the survi 
 vals of the divine right of force and fraud. 
 I determined that my city should exist for 
 the granting and preserving of equal rights. 
 I determined that there should be no privi 
 leges granted to the few. We have no monop 
 oly laws ; we have no patent-rights, or copy 
 rights, even." 
 
 " But is that just ? " said the man. " Has 
 not a man a right to his book ? " 
 
 " He has a right to sell his book once, but 
 not for a half-century. It is just, when all 
 privileges are abolished together. Then each 
 man invents for all and all the rest invent for 
 him. It is a free exchange of benefits." 
 
 The man s face shone. 
 
 " I see ! " he said. " The incentive to inven 
 tion is the love of it ; the reward is the pleasure 
 of creating." 
 
 She arose and they walked on, his mind 
 exalted with the new idea. 
 
 " And they are all so happy and prosperous ! " 
 he exclaimed, his mind turning back to the 
 brown girls he had seen gathering fruit among 
 170 
 
In Her Presence at Last 
 
 the broad leaves as he glided down from the 
 mountain the day before. 
 
 u So happy, so healthy, and so beautiful," she 
 continued, as they entered a retreat where she 
 threw herself on a lion s skin that covered a 
 broad, silken couch. He sank at her side. He 
 put out his hand to touch and take hers to his 
 heart. She did not repel him. She did not 
 take her hand away. She did not disdain his 
 touch; but somehow her soul seemed far, far 
 away, above him, so far above him. So much 
 larger she seemed as he sat there in his narrow 
 vanity and selfishness, that he felt like crouch 
 ing down on the floor at her feet. 
 
 How tranquilly grand she was in all her silent 
 splendor. Time had only made her more glori 
 ous, glorious in body as in soul it seemed now, 
 now as she sat there all aglow and flushed with 
 the excitement of their meeting. But it was 
 only momentary with her, this flush and glow 
 and glory of form and face. Beauty there was, 
 and glow and color, fervor and fire even ; but it 
 was the fire and glow of the dying sun. 
 
 The kindly old priest came back after a time 
 to take the stranger with him. They wandered 
 171 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 away together, and in a quiet way he talked 
 when requested, very earnestly of himself to the 
 stranger, and as nearly as can be recalled as 
 follows : 
 
 " As for being a priest, I am a priest ; and 
 yet I am not now all priest. It did not seem 
 good to me that the people should be ignorant 
 and dependent to the end of time. If the world 
 is to lay aside the sword and turn to the plough 
 share it must be done intelligently if done per 
 manently. Love must be in the hearts of the 
 people as well as in the hearts of the priests. 
 Religion must be a fact, not merely a form. 
 The people are good, the world is beautiful, and 
 God is love. Let the child that comes laughing 
 down out of heaven to us, clapping its tiny 
 hands with delight all day in the open fields, not 
 be told that it is sinful, and that the world is 
 wicked, and that God is angry with this beauti 
 ful world which he has made for man. No, 
 no ! God has made each child happy, and it 
 should be forbidden that man, priest or layman, 
 should make it unhappy. What evangelist has 
 ever yet gone forth preaching faith in man ? 
 Not one. But man is and ever has been 
 172 
 
In Her Presence at Last 
 
 preaching the depravity of man. Man seems 
 even to try to show the goodness of God by 
 publishing his own wickedness. It is high time 
 to stop this. You cannot make even a child 
 good by forever forcing it to believe it is bad. 
 
 " Let man go into the desert, having faith in 
 God as Moses had, but above all faith in man ; 
 and with the gospel of peace and good-will he 
 can, in this age, when savage men and savage 
 beasts have ceased to be, build such a New Jeru 
 salem as the world has never dreamed of. 
 
 " Look at Salt Lake, ignorant leaders, a 
 degrading religion, the lowest of Europe for a 
 following, one tenth to the church, much time 
 and hard toil to the temple ; and yet the Union 
 to-day contains no better, happier, or more pros 
 perous people. Therefore preach that man is 
 good, open the sea-doors and let hungry Europe 
 come to people our deserts." 
 
 The City Builder found himself being irresis 
 tibly drawn toward this thoughtful man. He 
 asked him to tell how it was that he came to 
 walk out and down from his high place and take 
 up his home in the desert. 
 
 Very deliberately he began, after some reflec 
 ts 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 tion, and spoke, as nearly as can be remembered, 
 to this effect : 
 
 " There is a sort of Free-Masonry, as it were, 
 among men in the world of thought ; a sort of 
 common ground, common sense, in upper worlds 
 of thought. The eminent theologian is not 
 necessarily a more religious man than the emi 
 nent mathematician. The eminent mathema 
 tician is not of necessity a wiser man than the 
 eminent theologian. But in this age of advance 
 ment all thinkers of all creeds or callings have a 
 community of thought on the common ground 
 of common-sense. And looking out and down 
 from this, oftentimes with their gray heads laid 
 close together, they have had their hearts torn 
 continually at the contemplation of the misery 
 of men. The eminent and thoughtful theolo 
 gians, most especially, have deplored and con 
 tinue to deplore this misery, so inseparably inter 
 woven, in the present order of things, with false 
 hood practiced in the name of Jesus Christ. 
 Now, of these eminent men of the church there 
 are, and long have been, two distinct kinds : one 
 the kind that pities the misery and deplores the 
 ignorance and deceit, but at the same time sees 
 174 
 
In Her Presence at Last 
 
 no way out of it all, and believes that the 
 misery and the ignorance and the deceit are 
 inseparable, and that the best thing to do is to 
 leave things as they are and go right along with 
 all the falsehoods and all the forms and all the 
 fees. The other kind of man among the emi 
 nent theologians is the one who desires to despise 
 forms and ceremonies and shams, and to walk 
 in the footprints of the meek and lowly Naza- 
 rene, without pay or price. Of course there is 
 a third class, or kind of theologians, so-called, 
 and this is, by far the most numerous. But 
 remember, I have been speaking of emiment 
 men, of thinkers, not of men who enter the 
 church as they enter the army, merely for the 
 money and to escape that one first command of 
 God when man was driven out of Eden, which 
 was, l In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 
 bread. 5 But as this large class weighs nothing 
 in the world of thought, I need not speak of it 
 again. The second kind referred to, however, 
 is more numerous than one would at first believe. 
 So, when I learned that an attempt was to be 
 made somewhere in the deserts of America to 
 found a community as an example to the world, 
 175 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 on the plain, brief precepts, principles, example, 
 and sermons of Jesus Christ, I turned my back 
 on forms and begged to be of it. And then I 
 wanted to help destroy gold and silver, the root 
 of so much evil ; and having long had a theory 
 that gold and silver grow, as mosses or even as 
 potatoes grow, I wanted time and room and 
 place to put it to the test." 
 
 " And it is you, you who made all this gold 
 and silver that glitters everywhere in such pro 
 fusion ? So much gold, and yet a waiter ! " 
 
 " A waiter has simply combined some of 
 God s elements and put them in favorable place 
 to grow. The potato which Magellan found in 
 Brazil was not fit to eat. Now it feeds half the 
 world; and I can pave the whole world with gold." 
 
 " But," exclaimed the startled stranger, " this 
 discovery will upset the whole commercial 
 world." 
 
 " There is a God," answered his companion > 
 gravely ; " and this discovery, like the discovery 
 of America, like the discovery of the properties 
 of steam, electricity, all great and good things, 
 came in its full season. The pursuit of wealth, 
 like the ancient pursuit of war, has had its uses 
 176 
 
In Her Presence at Last 
 
 as well as its abuses. The world in its swift 
 progress is fast leaving the latter far behind, 
 though there are still those who think the 
 butchery of their brothers a noble pursuit and a 
 fair expression of that law of nature which in 
 sists on the survival of the fittest ; and it may 
 be centuries still before the dull and unthinking 
 masses cease to regard hoarding as the highest 
 and chiefest of pursuits. But now, since we 
 know the secret of making gold grow in the 
 recesses of rocks, as mosses grow on the outside, 
 they will no longer hoard gold. And that is the 
 death-blow to the miser and the money-lender. 
 " You know, when gold was first found in 
 California, English bankers sent commissions to 
 America, urging that silver only be made the 
 commercial basis. So you see that we have 
 only to find gold in such masses as we have 
 silver, a thing still possible, even in the moun 
 tains of Russia or the Americas, to destroy it as 
 a basis of trade. And ah, what a triumph, what 
 a day of emancipation when we shall proclaim 
 our discovery to the world, and Russia shall let 
 loose her millions from the mines in the Ural ; 
 when the bravest and best men of our great 
 
 ia 177 
 
"The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 land shall cease to destroy rivers and forests and 
 come out from the Rocky Mountain caverns to 
 the sun and the plains and " 
 
 " And commerce shall cease ? " 
 
 " Commerce, in its best estate, will begin." 
 
 " And your currency ? " 
 
 " Will be honor ; as it is now, in nine cases 
 out of ten, nine dollars in ten. A merchant of 
 long standing and stainless name only gives his 
 name, his cheque, in payment. Is a nation less 
 than a man ? I tell you that commerce, free 
 and open interchange between men and nations, 
 will only begin when honor is made a basis, 
 instead of base metal, when this mighty nation 
 of United States shall say to the nations of the 
 earth, as it said to its own people in the great 
 Civil war, Here is my honor, my promise to 
 pay ; I have done with shifting and varying 
 values that wreck and impoverish and make 
 miserable my people " 
 
 cc But if ? " 
 
 " There should be no such words. We have 
 only to insist on it, to persist in it, and then how 
 eagerly other nations will follow ! and the poet s 
 dream, c the federation of the world ! " 
 178 
 
XVIII. Give Us This Day Our 
 Daily Bread 
 
 THE DAY sat by with banner furled ; 
 
 His battered shield hung on the wall 5 
 One great star walked the upper world, 
 
 All purple-robed, in Stately Hall ; 
 Some unseen reapers gathered golden sheaves, 
 The skies were as the tree of life in yellow leaves. 
 
 God s poor of Hebron rested. Then 
 
 Straightway unto their presence drew 
 A captain with his band of men 
 
 And smote His poor, and well-nigh slew, 
 Saying, " Hence, ye poor ! Behold, the king this night 
 Comes forth with torch and dance and loud delight." 
 
 His poor, how much they cared to see ! 
 
 How begged they, prone, to see, to hear ! 
 But spake the captain angrily, 
 
 And drove them forth with sword and spear, 
 And shut the gate ; and when the king passed through, 
 These lonely poor they knew not what to do. 
 
 Lo, then a soft- voiced stranger said : 
 " Come ye with me a little space. 
 I know where torches gold and red 
 Gleam down a peaceful, ample place ; 
 Where song and perfume fill the restful air, 
 And men speak scarce at all. The King is there." 
 
 They passed ; they sat a grass-set hill 
 
 What king hath carpets like to this ? 
 What king hath music like the trill 
 
 Of crickets mid these silences 
 These perfumed silences, that rest upon 
 The soul like sunlight on a hill at dawn ? 
 179 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 Behold what blessings in the air ! 
 
 What benedictions in the dew ! 
 These olives lift their arms in prayer ; 
 
 They turn their leaves, God reads them throtgh j 
 Yon lilies where the falling water sings 
 Are fairer-robed than choristers of kings. 
 
 Lift now your heads ! yon golden bars 
 That build the porch of heaven, seas 
 
 Of silver-sailing golden stars 
 
 Yea, these are yours, and all of these ! 
 
 For yonder king hath never yet been told 
 
 Of silver seas that sail these ships of gold. 
 
 They turned, they raised their heads on high ; 
 
 They saw, the first time saw and knew, 
 The awful glories of the sky, 
 
 The benedictions of the dew 5 
 And from that day His poor were richer far 
 Than all such kings as keep where follies are. 
 
 THE stranger, having turned aside from 
 the meditative priest, felt himself drifting 
 again into Miriam s presence. The sun had 
 gone down ; the stars were out, and yet it was 
 not night, or at least, it was not dark. Light, 
 light everywhere ! Not jets of light, like gas, 
 or electric-lights, but level sheets of light, soft, 
 large, and luminous as the face of the moon. 
 But more of this hereafter. 
 
 " You will dine with us now ? " 
 He wanted to say that he would like to sit 
 and hear her and her only, forever and forever ; 
 1 80 
 
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread 
 
 for that had been the truth. He could not 
 have dared to lie to her, even in compliment ; 
 but he assented in silence, and she led on 
 through the luminous woods and ways of glass. 
 They finally entered what seemed to be a 
 grove, with a great table reaching far down 
 and out of sight under broad-sweeping leaves. 
 
 He sat at her right hand. Grave and learned 
 men, beautiful and silent women, brown and 
 black and pearly white, were here and there 
 between the men, like fruit among the foliage 
 overhead. 
 
 He could see the stars and the moon in the 
 blue sky through the leaves. 
 
 " What will you do if it rains ? " 
 
 With a finger partly raised to her lips, for 
 the music and dancing were about to begin, 
 she said kindly, as she leaned her face so close 
 to his that he breathed the perfume of her 
 hair : 
 
 u The sky which you see is seen through 
 a dome of glass." 
 
 The musicians, some distance back and up 
 in the boughs, like singing birds, were not of 
 the old and tired type, bald and exhausted from 
 181 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 bad air and bad lights, and broken by care and 
 anxiety; they were ruddy and merry and full of 
 the music of their own high spirits, girls here, 
 boys there, middle-aged men and middle-aged 
 women ; yet all young, young with the eternal 
 youth of love and content and kindliness. 
 
 A note ! a bar ! a breath of warm wind in 
 the trees ! Zephyrs ? birds ? ^Eolian harps ? a 
 far-off call of cooling waters ? What was it, 
 and what did it all mean ? 
 
 Can you conceive of silent music ? Well, 
 this was silent music. At least it was music 
 without noise. We need say no more now, we 
 might be misunderstood were we to say less. 
 It was music without the noise that so inso 
 lently attends ordinary music. May we say it 
 was noiseless melody ? 
 
 It was not the music of the civilized city, it 
 was the new music of the new order that is to 
 come, the wild, free, far-off, and effortless 
 melody of the desert and of the silent children 
 of the desert ; of love, peace, pleasure, rest. 
 Suddenly, on a glass stage to the right and left 
 and among the great banana-leaves and lofty 
 ferns with fronded palms that pushed against 
 182 
 
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread 
 
 the sky of glass in heaven, the dancers glided. 
 And they too were noiseless, and they glided as 
 if in the air. The glass was so perfect that, 
 like the artificial sky overhead, it was invisible. 
 
 To and fro, forward, back, bowed or erect, 
 singly or in couples, they sang and sang in the 
 movements of their most perfect bodies. The 
 leaves and ferns were very abundant and very 
 broad, and these dancing girls were natural. 
 
 Then slowly all sound, all movement of all 
 things ceased. Slowly and unobtrusively a 
 white-haired man, far down among the trees, 
 rose up and solemnly bowed his head. Then 
 all heads were bowed with his ; each one 
 present repeated the Lord s Prayer, and that 
 was all. 
 
 As he took his seat, a beautiful woman arose 
 and slowly proceeded to read the Sermon on the 
 Mount. 
 
 Meantime the dinner went on as if no 
 stranger were present. In fact, the stranger 
 was not allowed to feel that he was a stranger. 
 
 And such a dinner! such milk and honey, 
 such fruits, such oils ! Surely the wearied man 
 had come at last upon the land of milk and 
 183 
 
"The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 honey. The Lord had surely led him through 
 the green pastures by the still waters. 
 
 And what a continual melody of melodies, 
 even after the girls had melted away one by one 
 from among the ferns and banana-leaves, and 
 the musicians and all had settled into place at 
 table! a sort of melodious silence! No rattling 
 of knives on rattling plates, in the carving and 
 handling and mutilation of meats, no coming and 
 going of servants ; no rattling and rasping of 
 feet on marble floors ; they sat with their feet on 
 the soft, white, natural sands of the desert. 
 
 But this one dining-hall, or temple to 
 melody, was only an example of a constantly 
 increasing number of a similar and yet very 
 dissimilar character ; for while the people had 
 their individual homes, they loved to come 
 often to these pleasant dining-clubs or halls. 
 
 This dining-hall which was devoted to seri 
 ous themes, and was preferred by venerable men 
 and women of earnest thought, was a smaller 
 and less pretentious place. Yet even here, 
 peace, repose, the perfect good-manners, a low 
 voice, an equanimity of soul and serenity of all 
 things, all things keeping harmonious melody 
 184 
 
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread 
 
 with lisping leaves overhead and soft, warm 
 sands underfoot. 
 
 The hall where the men and women who 
 were entirely devoted to science loved to meet 
 and dine was also peculiar to itself, as were 
 those of poetry and painting. But each and all 
 had this dominating preference for nature s 
 harmony of color, harmony of source, harmony 
 of soul. 
 
 And now let us mention one thing here 
 before it is quite forgotten. He had been here 
 many days, had sat at many dinners ; yet one 
 day, when passing with an English clergy 
 man through a herd of fat cattle, he suddenly 
 remembered that he had not tasted roast-beef 
 since coming to the place. 
 
 u You have not tasted roast-beef nor any 
 other kind of meat. Olive-oil, butter, eggs, 
 cream, and so on, have been your closest 
 approach to meat-eating," said the good man, 
 smiling. 
 
 " And you do not eat animal food ? " 
 
 u We do not want animal food here, and we 
 do not need animal food here ; and so, of 
 185 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 course, we do not eat our sleek and mild-eyed 
 companions." 
 
 " Of what use, then, are your herds ? " 
 
 " For milk, butter, cheese ; besides that, when 
 these cattle grow so old that they are helpless, 
 they are driven to a remote place and relieved 
 of life by a painless death j then we permit our 
 selves to use their hides." 
 
 u Yes, you must have shoes." 
 
 " Not at all necessary, not at all. Did ever 
 man see such pretty feet as Indian women 
 have ? There have never been seen on earth 
 such small and pretty feet as the American 
 Indian women have always had. And yet they, 
 even in the North, are and have always been, so 
 far as possible, a barefooted people. And here it 
 is not only possible for our women as well as 
 men to go barefooted, but it is even desirable for 
 comfort. No, we do not really need much 
 leather here," added he. " Now, when I work 
 in the field" 
 
 In his surprise at the idea of the Established 
 
 Churchman working in the fields the stranger must 
 
 have suddenly turned his head ; for he looked at 
 
 him inquiringly for a second and then continued : 
 
 186 
 
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread 
 
 " As I was going on to say, when I work in the 
 fields I always go barefooted, for I like the touch 
 of the soft soil and the warm sand. It makes 
 my blood run like wine, and I live in my feet 
 as well as in my head at such a time. My 
 wife, however, still wears shoes when she does 
 her weaving or spinning." 
 
 " Your wife ? weaving ? Pardon me, you 
 are jesting." 
 
 " Nay, you shall see her at her weaving 
 some day, and soon. With us the abolition 
 of all special privileges has made it necessary 
 for all to toil. But when all men toil, no man 
 need work hard or beyond his strength. Work, 
 in fact, has become a recreation, a necessity of 
 perfect enjoyment." 
 
 " But even when all toil, work must be a 
 hardship." 
 
 " Not at all. Two hours a day at any 
 employment will support one nicely." 
 
 u But do the rich work also ? What pres 
 sure brings them to toil ? " 
 
 " There are no rich in the sense in which 
 you use the word. Of course some men care 
 more for wealth than others, but as they must 
 187 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 earn it they must work for it. The State does 
 not equalize possessions, but it equalizes oppor 
 tunities ; and there are no wide differences in 
 possessions such as the outside world shows. 
 Ponder well on this, my son. Inequalities in 
 condition are born out of special favors granted 
 by the State to a few. There are two ways 
 to cure this evil : Extend the same favors to all, 
 or withhold them from the few. We believe 
 in the latter method, which is more truly in 
 harmony with the Declaration of Independence. 
 With us, possession is dependent upon personal 
 toil or the free gift of friendship." 
 
 The man pondered. " It is wonderfully simple, 
 but it does not get back of natural differences." 
 
 u We do not propose to question nature," 
 said the preacher, with a lofty look on his face. 
 " The powers of the human brain are infinitely 
 varied. The dullard in one direction may be 
 wondrously skilful in another. Men differ 
 from each other very little more than birds of 
 the same species. Equality of chance will 
 prove this. Freedom is the magic word, and 
 has been through all ages. We are nearing the 
 fulfilment of its prophecy." 
 188 
 
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread 
 
 The man now spoke hesitatingly ; he had 
 another question to ask : 
 
 " But are there not unpleasant tasks which 
 all shirk ? Is not some force necessary ? " 
 
 " I see the question," said the preacher. 
 " There is no force in our colony to control the 
 action of the individual, save only when the action 
 interferes with the equal freedom of the rest. 
 We have no slaves on whom to throw our menial 
 tasks. All menial service has disappeared." 
 
 " But there must be unpleasant tasks," per 
 sisted the man. 
 
 " There were at first ; but as all were free to 
 do them or not, the most unpleasant soon 
 commanded the highest wages, and the em 
 ployers were forced to abolish them altogether 
 or make them pleasant. It was marvelous how 
 soon invention turned itself in the direction of 
 making heavy tasks light, and changing or 
 abolishing whole industries. Any industry 
 which depends upon the slavery of a single one 
 of my people, said our great leader, will be 
 abolished, because all my people must be free. 
 This law of freedom has made every mine light 
 as day, every factory silent and sunny, and 
 189 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 every menial task a source of forward move 
 ment, freedom to freemen." 
 
 The good man s face glowed as he spoke. 
 His smile had tender sympathy in it. 
 
 The man caught at the preacher s arm : 
 " Tell me more ! " he cried. " The light is 
 breaking for me." 
 
 " Go see for yourself," smiled the clergyman. 
 " You will not find one noisome workshop, not 
 one dark and damp mine, nor one furnace-like 
 place of toil in the city. There will be a lack 
 of many things which have been considered 
 necessary to civilization ; but we say that any 
 industry or enterprise which is based upon the 
 enforced toil of our fellow-men is not civiliza 
 tion ; it is the infamy of civilization. Come 
 with me. You will not find a toil-worn face, 
 nor a gnarled and trembling, work-scarred hand 
 in this city of ours. Every man, woman, and 
 child in this colony can throw the head back 
 and laugh with joy of life and an unclouded 
 future. Come to see is to be convinced." 
 
 The bewildered man rose and followed. " It 
 is like the law of gravity, it reaches everywhere, 
 this law of equal freedom." 
 190 
 
XIX. The Toil of God 
 
 BEHOLD the silvered mists that rise 
 
 From all-night toiling in the corn. 
 The mists have duties up the skies, 
 
 The skies have duties with the morn 5 
 While all the world is full of earnest care 
 To make the fair world still more wondrous fair, 
 
 More lordly fair ; the stately morn 
 
 Moves down the walk of golden wheat ; 
 
 Her guards of honor gild the corn 
 In golden pathway for her feet j 
 
 The purpled hills she crowns in crowns of gold, 
 
 And God walks with us as He walked of old. 
 
 Ai, the mother s love here ! the lover s love 
 here ! the love in the hearts of all here ! 
 the God in the hearts of all ! 
 
 Our unfortunate city-builder, who had 
 wrought so hard on his mountain-side by the 
 sea and yet had failed so signally, sought out, at 
 every opportunity, the silent and wonderful 
 woman who had done all this since they parted 
 in Egypt. He wanted to sit at her feet and 
 learn. How helpless he was, he now began to 
 know too well. Would she only teach him, tell 
 him how to go on ! 
 
 191 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 They sat one day by the fountain in the 
 Toltec ruins. The birds were busy, the bees 
 were busy. 
 
 " Yes, it is always just like that here," she 
 said at length. " We all work together and 
 bring our sweets to the common hive, not 
 because of law, but because of liberty." 
 
 He bowed his head in meditation for a 
 time, then said : 
 
 " You have succeeded, I have failed. It 
 is but right that you tell me why it is that I, 
 the strong man, should have failed, while you, 
 the woman, and not so strong in body, suc 
 ceeded. You will tell me ? " 
 
 After some hesitation she began and went on 
 slowly ; for she was very far from strong : 
 
 " In the first place you failed by tempting 
 men to leave you and turn back to the task 
 masters and the flesh-pots of Egypt. Why, had 
 Moses himself set his children down on a 
 mountain-side in sight of some beautiful city 
 and offered them the choice to stay or go, how 
 many would have remained with him and gone 
 forward to build Jerusalem ? William the 
 Conqueror burned his ships behind him, and 
 192 
 
The Toil of God 
 
 so kept his sixty thousand at his side. Even 
 the Pilgrim Fathers would have returned, could 
 they have consistently done so, as William 
 Penn returned." 
 
 There was a long silence. The bees and the 
 birds and the grasshoppers that sung in the 
 grass at their feet had it all their own way. 
 Then she went on : 
 
 u No, we here, removed from almost every 
 temptation, do not allow ourselves to come and 
 go and evade the first great law of God that 
 you allowed to the lowest of the low, the 
 weakest of the weak, and in the midst of every 
 temptation." 
 
 " And that first great law of God is ? " 
 
 " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 
 bread till thou returnest to the ground. " 
 
 He caught his breath and said : " Why, I 
 thought the first great law of God was the love 
 of God and to love thy neighbor as thyself. J 
 
 " Hear me, hear me," she said. " The very 
 first, last words of God to man, as the gates of 
 Paradise closed behind, were these : In the 
 sweat of thy face not in the sweat of the face 
 of another shalt thou eat bread till thou 
 
 3 193 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 returnest to the ground ; and we search the 
 Bible in vain for any single exception in favor 
 of any human being, be he priest, prophet, 
 president, or king. Why, even the emperor of 
 the heathen Mongol must plow and sow his 
 field in the sweat of his face. And so firmly 
 fixed is this law of God, established in the laws 
 of nature, that the experience of six thousand 
 years testifies that this is the only path to per 
 fect health. This is a positive law, the first 
 law, and a positive law that admits of no equiv 
 ocation. It fell from the voice of God cen 
 turies before Moses reached up his hands to 
 receive the tablets where His finger, amid thun 
 der and flame, had traced the negative laws of 
 the Decalogue." 
 
 " The negative laws ? " 
 
 " As I said before, this one first law, that thou 
 shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy face, is a 
 positive law. The Decalogue is almost entirely 
 negative. But only let the one, first, great com 
 mand be strictly observed and the Decalogue 
 will never be broken. It is the one continual 
 effort to escape this one first command that brings 
 man in collision with the laws of Sinai. As for 
 194 
 
The Toil of God 
 
 the law of love, it is as natural as nature; though 
 the true reading is not as you read it. After 
 the love of God, which is inseparable from all 
 goodness, you are commanded to love thy 
 neighbor as thyself. Do you understand ? " 
 
 "Certainly, and so I have tried and tried to 
 do." 
 
 " But have you not tried to love him more ? 
 Mark you, you are to love thy neighbor as 
 thyself ; not more than thyself, but as thyself. 
 Now as you love the good that is in you, so 
 shall you love the good that is in your neighbor ; 
 as you hate the evil that is in you, so shall you 
 hate and abhor the evil that is in your neigh 
 bor, yea, hate it and abhor it." 
 
 A long time he held his head low in thought 
 now, and she sat listening to the birds, bees, 
 grasshoppers, God. Then he said : 
 
 " Why may not any resolute souls, if wise 
 enough and strong enough, step out from the 
 world and into this unpeopled middle-land, any 
 where, anywhere from here up to Canada, or 
 even down to Patagonia, and do much as you 
 have done here, with this example of yours 
 before them ? " 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 u It should be done and it will be done, over 
 and over again. The mistake has been in 
 man s not believing in man. Man has said 
 man is bad ; kings, politicians, creedists, have 
 kept man arrayed against man since the dawn of 
 history. To-day Europe keeps millions and 
 millions of men standing with guns and swords 
 in hand to slay their brothers Christians ! 
 But this nation has grown beyond that ; and 
 now the people of this city have grown beyond 
 the idle lawyers, idle politicians, and idle 
 creedists who continually tell us that man is 
 bad, evil, weak, worthless, and cannot be 
 trusted to go forth from slavery, as Moses went 
 forth to found his own city in the wilderness." 
 
 " Then I shall abandon my mountain-side 
 above the city, and lead my people as Moses led 
 his people, and build my city in the wilderness 
 as you have built yours." 
 
 He was very much in earnest, but she raised 
 her thin hand in protest as she said : 
 
 " No ; c what man putteth his hand to the 
 
 plough and looketh back ? Go forward to the 
 
 end as you began. An example of great effort, 
 
 even a great failure, is worth much to the world 
 
 196 
 
The Toil of God 
 
 now. The foundations of cities planted by 
 man in mud and malaria are shaken. Take 
 New York, for example, once a small city of 
 great men, now a great city of small men, who 
 contend and strive and struggle ; a city con 
 tinually divided against itself. And so we know 
 that it shall one day have no place on the map 
 of the world. No, not wars or earthquakes, 
 nothing of that sort as of old when walls were 
 built, but that lowest of all low pursuits and the 
 coarsest of all human qualities, commerce, 
 money-getting, this is in her heart to her 
 ruin ; this is the baneful wooden horse hold 
 ing destruction within. 
 
 " You should not have planted entirely for 
 profit. Go back and plant as God planted. 
 Remember the Bible says : c And the Lord God 
 planted a garden eastward in Eden wherein he 
 caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the 
 sight and good for food. 
 
 " Observe that the trees pleasant to the 
 sight, came first. Far back in the morning of 
 the world, before man was, God planted a gar 
 den in which the beautiful, c pleasant to the 
 sight, was preferred to the useful, that which is 
 197 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 good for food. Yet man in his arrogant domain 
 over the earth is ever ready to destroy that 
 which is pleasant to the sight and set up in its 
 place that which is good for food. 
 
 " Man seems to think that the trees were 
 made for man. The truth is man was made 
 for the trees. The trees came in the order of 
 creation on the third day, age or cycle, while 
 man was left to the very last. Man was never 
 thought of until long after the trees were in full 
 glory. Long after, ages perhaps, after the 
 planting of the garden eastward in Eden man 
 was created. Man was created for the express 
 purpose of taking care of the trees pleasant to 
 the sight and good for food. He was placed 
 4 in the garden to tend it and to keep 
 it. It looks as if man might have been 
 quite forgotten had he not been needed to 
 take care of the trees in the garden eastward 
 in Eden. 
 
 u We are in the habit of calling this Pacific 
 sea-bank, this garden with its white wall of 
 snow and world of trees pleasant to the sight, 
 the new garden of Eden. Yet we fly right in 
 the face of Holy Writ, God, Nature, and strip 
 198 
 
The Toil of God 
 
 our garden and sell the garments of our good 
 Mother Earth for gold. 
 
 " There is nothing plainer in all the pages of 
 the Bible than the truth, that man was made 
 to tend and keep the trees. There is nothing 
 truer in all the pages of history than that 
 where man destroyed the trees he himself has 
 been destroyed. 
 
 " America owes ever so much to the Indians 
 for their care and skill in forestry. But for the 
 savage, so-called, we would have found but a 
 barren waste along the Atlantic sea-bank. One 
 of the oldest books touching on American for 
 ests, in the British Museum, has this statement 
 in quaint old English, that the squats (squaws ?) 
 do in the moist St. Martin s, summertime, when 
 the leaves have fallen, set fire to the leaves, and 
 so do not only prevent great fires in the dry 
 season, but they do burn away the underwood 
 so that you may ride to the hounds N as in an 
 English park. 
 
 " When the great American poet comes he will 
 
 lift his face to the trees that are pleasant to the 
 
 sight and sing as never sang man since the seers 
 
 of old, who saw and knew the Cedars of Lebanon. 
 
 199 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " Consider if you can the sublime, the simple, 
 imperial dignity of a single great tree that is 
 pleasant to the sight, and there is no tree great 
 or small that is not pleasant to the sight ; front 
 ing the four winds of Heaven, sun or rain, 
 flame or frost, lifting his arms in attitude of 
 prayer through all the centuries, drawing his 
 shapely presence up and up and up, his thous 
 ands tons of weight. By what hard and terri 
 ble toil we may not know, but we must surely 
 know that there can be no hard toil, no weighty 
 work like the work of a great tree to climb up 
 and up and up toward the sun through all the 
 battling elements and to hold his place there, as 
 if to prop the very porch of Heaven, the 
 House of Him who caused every tree to grow 
 that is pleasant to the sight. 
 
 " And when the great tree falls, observe 
 that it is not in battle, not in storm, but in days 
 of absolute calm and stillness. It is very 
 strange, but only in days of calm can you 
 hear the thunder of a falling King of the 
 forest. And how he falls, an emperor to the 
 last, silent as Caesar. 
 
 " You will stay on your steeps of stone to 
 
The Toil of God 
 
 the end, planting and planting till you have a 
 forest of trees c pleasant to the sight. You 
 will make pleasant resting-places for the poor 
 who will come from out the city for a breath 
 of air. You will give work to the poor by 
 heaping of the stones into towers, pyramids, 
 monuments to love. These white tombs and 
 towers bursting up through your green forest 
 will be beautiful, beautiful, so beautiful that 
 people will want to rest there and rest there. 
 Give them a place to rest, the living and the 
 dead." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; I will. But what a miracle has 
 been wrought here ! " 
 
 " It is not a miracle," she hastened to say ; 
 " I simply removed all friction. As for that 
 stupendous work which is being done," and she 
 lifted her face toward the glittering sea of spires 
 and towers beyond, " it has cost scarcely a 
 thought ; and it has cost no man any waste of 
 time. The eminent humanitarians who gath 
 ered about me here had time, as never before in 
 the history of man, to really think, and really be 
 humanitarians. There was an old mercenary say 
 ing that time is money. We esteem the man 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 who saves time to man as the only real 
 millionaire. He is not only a millionaire, he is 
 the emancipator of the human race." 
 
 u Yet Ruskin has said that man should first 
 set man to work, then the cattle, then the 
 machine." 
 
 " Yes, and Morris taught that we should 
 turn back to the old pastoral times, and live as 
 the shepherds lived." She said this with a sad 
 shake of the head. " Why, this," she went on, 
 " is like as if the two great captains of Moses 
 had turned back to the flesh-pots of Egypt. 
 But at the same time these teachings show us 
 that the world is ripe, ready for open revolt 
 against the hard and bitter conditions of its 
 people." 
 
 She paused, and he took the occasion offered 
 to look her in the face, and with bitter remem 
 brances ask her again why he had failed so sadly; 
 why his long endeavor to build up a city on the 
 mountain-side should have been so despised ; for 
 he felt she had not told all. 
 
 At last she said slowly, sadly : " Why, then, 
 in the second place, you failed because of your 
 vanity, your painful and most pitiful vanity." 
 
The Toil of God 
 
 The sudden flush of pain that swept over his 
 face as his eyes fell before her told how truly 
 the probe had gone to the heart, and how 
 necessary was the cruel surgery. After a pause, 
 and leaning forward her face, she said in the 
 kindest and most pitying manner : 
 
 " Your vanity made you choose a conspicuous 
 place, where you could daily proclaim from your 
 housetop how good and humble and industrious 
 and unselfish you were. You thrust yourself 
 and your new ideas in the midst of hard 
 men who had but the one old idea of getting 
 and getting ; and then you proclaimed by word 
 and deed that if a man smote the one cheek 
 you would cheerfully turn the other, and that if 
 a man took from you one garment you would 
 not only give another, but the whole suit ; and 
 so, right in the face of the Lord s Prayer, you 
 led men into temptation." 
 
 The weight of her truth bowed his head low 
 before her once more ; for he saw that he had, 
 after all, been but a boastful Pharisee. Finally 
 she went on : 
 
 " The world is dotted all over with good men 
 who are trying to do good in secret ; but he 
 ao 3 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 who proclaims it, c verily, he bath his reward. 
 Yet go forward. You have not failed ; you 
 only have not yet succeeded." 
 
 Then from far away, as if from that other 
 world, came her words, His words : u Be ye wise 
 as serpents, but as harmless as doves. . . . 
 I leave my peace with you." 
 
 204 
 
XX. When Man is Not Watching 
 Man 
 
 I THINK the bees, the blessed bees, 
 
 Are better, wiser far than we. 
 The very wild birds in the trees 
 
 Are wiser far, it seems to me ; 
 For love and light and sun and air 
 Are theirs, and not a bit of care. 
 
 What bird makes claim to all God s trees ? 
 
 What bee makes claim to all God s flowers ? 
 Behold their perfect harmonies, 
 
 Their common hoard, the common hours ! 
 Say, why should man be less than these, 
 The happy birds, the hoarding bees ? 
 
 The birds ? What bird hath envied bird 
 That he sings on as God hath willed ? 
 
 Yet man what song of man is heard 
 But he is stoned, or cursed, or killed ? 
 
 Thank God, sweet singers of the air, 
 
 No sparrow falls without his care. 
 
 O, brown bee in your honey-house ! 
 
 Could we like you but find it best 
 To common build and peace espouse, 
 
 To common toil, to common rest, 
 To common share our sweets with men 
 We surely would be better then. 
 
 "HT^HREE other things I constantly wonder 
 A at here," was his remark to her one 
 morning : " The marvelous growth of your 
 205 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 groves ; the law and order ; and the large 
 intelligence of your people." 
 
 " In the first place, to answer you in order, 
 we have here three hundred and sixty-five days 
 in the year, in which to toil, fashion, build. 
 Besides that, these trees, plants, cereals, and all 
 things that spring from the earth, have twelve 
 full and fervid months in which to grow, while 
 in most places they have but four, six, or seven 
 at the farthest. So you see that we have three 
 or four times as many days and months in the 
 year here as in many places. All that this 
 desert, so-called, was waiting for came when we 
 brought the rain and led the water down from 
 the trout-streams or up from our artesian wells. 
 The water followed these channels and furrows 
 down through the dust and mud, the dust was 
 watered, the mud was drained, all by means of 
 this same force, and in this same furrow we 
 planted the banana-slip, the olive-branch, the 
 mulberry-tree, and all other sorts of trees from 
 all lands. Then we had only to widen and 
 duplicate the furrows, and sow them with rice, 
 then dam the furrow, and it was flooded and 
 brought to perfection without further effort. 
 206 
 
When Man is Not Watching Man 
 
 Cane, wheat, maize, all things under the sun in 
 fact, came to us and nourished us almost with 
 out a stroke or a bit of help from our hands. 
 And now here is one thing I must beg you to 
 note distinctly. We not only have had all the 
 time that God has given us because of a kindly 
 clime, but we have husbanded it. We have 
 cherished and housed and husbanded time as 
 others do gold." 
 
 He looked into her face inquiringly. 
 
 " I will explain," she said. " Civilized man, 
 so-called, spends his time in watching his fel 
 low-man. How many men in eleven are really 
 at work ? One ! Yes, in the greatest city of 
 earth, London, it takes ten men to watch and 
 keep that one man at work. In the country 
 the proportion of workers and watchers is 
 about evenly divided. Sometimes these English 
 take it into their heads to hang one of their 
 number. They actually spend a lifetime, or 
 or what would fully aggregate a long lifetime, 
 in taking that one man s life. But we have no 
 bankers, no landlords, no brokers, no soldiers, 
 no jailers, no idlers indeed of any sort set to 
 watch ourselves. So you see we have to our- 
 207 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 selves all the time that God and a genial clime 
 can give. And this answers, in some sort, at 
 least, your first inquiry. 
 
 "As for the second, our law and order, we 
 found that here, here with the savages, so-called. 
 It is true they had only the germ ; we have given 
 the germ growth. They had laid the keel of 
 our ship of State ; we have helped to launch it, 
 that is all. You see the Indian is and always 
 was," she went on, " the truest and most per 
 fect communist. All the lands, horses, products 
 of the fields and chase, everything but the bow 
 in his hand, was as much the property of his 
 brother as himself. And so there was no steal 
 ing ; there was no temptation to robbery or 
 murder for money or property. With this mill 
 stone of temptation taken from about a man s 
 neck, see how tall and erect he would stand ! 
 Take away the temptation to lie from the clerk 
 who sells goods, from the grocery-man, the 
 politician, all people, in fact, who live in idleness 
 upon the toil of others, and see what a long and 
 a strong step forward man has made, and how 
 little friction will then be found in the machine 
 of law and order. We have conserved all that 
 208 
 
When Man is Not Watching Man 
 
 was good in the Indian s life, and discarded that 
 which was outgrown. We have continued the 
 common ownership of nature s storehouse, and 
 left to the individual the fruit of his own toil. 
 
 "And now as to the third object of your 
 wonder," she said. " We had, as you well 
 know, long contemplated a colony in Palestine, 
 but we finally saw that this would be only a 
 garden for the thistles, and when the crisis came 
 we were quite ready. 
 
 u I had at hand the material for the new order 
 of things, so far as brave hearts and ready hands 
 could make it. All we had to do was to trans 
 fer ourselves to the spot where we were to set 
 up our tabernacle of pure worship, like the 
 Pilgrim Fathers. True, we were not nearly so 
 numerous then as now, but all the time our 
 friends have been coming ; and now, of course, 
 since all things flourish so wonderfully, they 
 will come in astonishing numbers. And they 
 will be, as they have been from the first, of the 
 very best, men and women who believe in 
 man and his glorious destiny ; men and women 
 who care for man, and are content to let God 
 take care of himself j men and women who 
 14 209 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 dare not presume to speak for God, but keep 
 silent and let him speak for himself; men and 
 women who devoutly adore all that is good and 
 beautiful, lovers, believers ; men and women 
 who here have time to meditate and see more 
 clearly ; men and women who with that dignity 
 of soul which is the only true humility, and 
 that humility of soul which is the only true 
 dignity, begin to see, and to say lovingly, one to 
 another : The Infinite God is " the aggregate 
 
XXI. Lessons Not In Books 
 
 MAN S books are but man s alphabet ; 
 
 Beyond and on his lessons lie 
 The lessons of the violet, 
 
 The large, gold letters of the sky. 
 
 ONE day, in his quiet rounds through this 
 new Eden on earth, and when quite alone, 
 he came upon a group of gray-haired and serene 
 men and women of most venerable aspect. 
 They were gathered in a grove by a fountain 
 near a field of corn. Not far away were herds 
 of cattle ruminating on the sloping brown hills. 
 Farther on and still up toward the higher land 
 were flocks of sheep under the yellow pines, 
 white and restful as summer clouds. 
 
 As he approached this quiet group of vener 
 able people, they, rather by act than word, made 
 him one of their number, and he sat down in 
 silence on a little hillock of wild grass in the 
 shadow of a broad palm-tree. 
 
 How perfectly serene, how entirely satisfied 
 they all seemed ! how unlike the garrulous and 
 nervous and never-satisfied old bodies of the 
 
 211 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 social world in the great cities in which he had 
 dwelt, were these tranquil and serene old women 
 here ! They were beautiful women, beautiful in 
 body as in soul. They literally made man in love 
 with old age, even before they had opened their 
 lips to speak in their low, sweet fashion. 
 
 And these benign and restful men ! He began 
 to recall the old men, old beaux, roues, whom 
 he had encountered in London, Paris, Rome, 
 their wrinkles, powder, paint ; their terror at the 
 approaches of time ; their dismay at the thought 
 of death ; their lies, lies on their lips, lies in every 
 act of their lives, their lustful lies to women, 
 their whole foul and most despicable existence. 
 
 "Ah me," thought he, " why may a man not 
 grow in grandeur as he grows in years, like the 
 mighty trees of the forest ? Is a man less than 
 a tree ? Shall a man who is made in God s 
 image make himself less than a tree ? " 
 
 " We meet here, or in some other like pleas 
 ant place, daily," began one of the most vener 
 able men, " to take lessons. We are children 
 at school, you see ;" and he smiled pleasantly on 
 the group of gray heads under the palms round 
 
 about. 
 
 aia 
 
Lessons Not In Books 
 
 " But you have no books." 
 
 " We desire thought rather than books. If 
 Shakespeare found in the books of his day only 
 4 words, words, words, what shall be said of the 
 books now that deluge the earth ? " 
 
 " But we have books every now and then that 
 gleam like lightning through a cloud." 
 
 " Yes, there are veins of gold in almost every 
 mountain, glints of light in almost every storm- 
 cloud, as you suggest ; but why have the storm 
 at all ? Why labor with the mountain of old 
 errors or take light from the cloud, when the 
 world is all light if we will but see the light ? " 
 
 "And books will not help you to see the 
 light ? " 
 
 " Hold a book up before your face continually, 
 and how much of the sun can you see ? " asked 
 the old man, earnestly. "No, the world has run all 
 to words, as a luxuriant garden runs to weeds in 
 the autumn ; the press, the pulpit nearly all 
 words, words, words ! " said the old man finally. 
 
 The stranger could but recall the protest of 
 Christ, as the kindly old man concluded and 
 was silent. He remembered that enduring 
 truths have been born in the desolate places ; 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 that the Ten Commandments came down to us 
 out of the most savage mountain ever seen ; 
 that Christ grew to manhood in the woods of 
 Nazareth ; that the Koran was written on 
 storm-bleached bones in a cave j that the face 
 of God was seen in the desert only of old, and 
 that it was only to a houseless boy on the plains 
 of Shinar, where he found a stone for a pillow, 
 that the ladder of heaven was let down. 
 
 u The one main duty of man to man is to 
 convince him that death is a thing not to be 
 feared, but, in its ordinary course, to be desired 
 above all things," said the master of the quiet 
 little school ; and he continued : " To convince 
 him of this he must be convinced of his immor 
 tality. He must not only be convinced of his 
 immortality, but he must be convinced that he 
 begins life, the next life, precisely where he 
 attains to in this ; that in this way, and this way 
 only, is it possible for a man to really lay up 
 treasures in heaven. And to convince a man of 
 his immortality and of the preservation of his 
 treasures in heaven is to develop the best that is 
 in him and all that is in him. In order that all 
 his senses may be developed, he must return to 
 
Lessons Not In Books 
 
 nature and nature s God. Why should the silly 
 sheep have sense of sight, smell, taste, superior 
 to our own ? Why should even a dog be able 
 to look a man in the face, or smell his foot 
 prints, and know more about him in a minute 
 than a man may learn in a year ? Not long 
 ago, while spending the night among the cattle, 
 so that I might learn from them, I saw some 
 rise up and move aside and look, as if they saw 
 God or angels pass ; or as if Christ had come 
 again to companion with the beasts of the stalls." 
 
 The master was silent a time ; then, as none 
 of his companions spoke, but all seemed inclined 
 to listen further, he went on : 
 
 " Thousands of years ago, we know man 
 met God and the angels face to face ; but in 
 grasping after gains, going out to battle, culti 
 vating only the sense of acquisition and of des 
 truction, man has fallen behind even the brute in 
 the finer senses of vision and apprehension of 
 the beautiful and good. But here, at last, after 
 all the ages of blackness and brutality, man 
 finds place and time to sit down and meditate in 
 silence and soberness, and to live by the pre 
 cepts of the Sermon on the Mount." 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 He again rested, and waited for the words of 
 others. As no one spoke, the master said to 
 them : 
 
 u You do well to meet daily, to meditate con 
 tinually ; for never had man such responsibility ; 
 because never had man, since that other Eden, 
 such opportunity. You do well to leave behind 
 you all books, the dreary history of continuous 
 crimes and bloodshed on the one hand, and the 
 weary round of lengthened prayers for impossi 
 ble things on the other hand. You have a right 
 to be happy, continually happy, as you are here. 
 Nay, more ; I assert that it is not only your 
 right to be happy, but it is your duty to be 
 happy ; and beyond this lies the boundless duty 
 to the world. Let us follow the footprints of 
 Christ, so that we may in some fair day over 
 take Christ, and then will the sad and weary 
 world follow in our footprints and be glad and 
 be good. Let us cultivate our senses by pure 
 and peaceful and unselfish lives, till we at length 
 have the discernment at least of dumb brutes. 
 Let us teach the world that if it will only lift 
 up its face from money-getting on earth it 
 may see God in heaven. 
 216 
 
XXII. -The Truly Brave 
 
 AND WHAT for the man who went forth for the right, 
 Was hit in the battle and shorn of a limb ? 
 Why, honor for him who falls in the fight, 
 Falls wounded of limb and crippled for life ; 
 Give honor, give glory, give pensions for him, 
 Give bread and give shelter for babes and for wife. 
 
 But what for the hero who battles alone 
 In battles of thought where God set him down ; 
 Who fought all alone and who fell overthrown 
 In his reason at last from the hardness and hate ? 
 Why, jibe him and jeer him and point as you frown 
 To that lowly, lone hero who dared challenge fate. 
 
 God pity, God pardon, and God help us all ! 
 " That young man of promise," wherever he be, 
 " That young man of promise," wherever he fall, 
 For fall, he must fall, tis a thousand to one, 
 Let us plant him a rose ; let us plant a great tree 
 To hide his poor grave from the world and the sun. 
 
 I tell you twere better to cherish that soul 
 That soldier that battles with thought for a sword, 
 That climbs the steep ramparts where wrong has control, 
 And falls beaten back by the rude, trampling horde. 
 Ay, better to cherish his words and his worth 
 Than all the Napoleons that ever cursed earth. 
 
 1 T AM going to the hospital before breakfast 
 A to-morrow ; it lies some forty miles out in 
 the mountains. We go by electric train. Will 
 you go ? " 
 " Gladly." 
 
 217 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 " But ah," and here she was sad and thought 
 ful, u this is a sad case I am going out to look 
 after. The woman is a friend of mine, a 
 princess by birth, and when in the world, the 
 struggling world as you know it, she was 
 always very ambitious of distinction. Thinking 
 herself cured of that, or rather hoping to 
 become quite cured of it here, she came to me 
 only a year ago. But alas ! In less than a 
 year after her arrival she grew again ambitious, 
 and, desiring a high place as director, she grew 
 so desperate as to tell a falsehood to some 
 others, who, like herself, had newly come and 
 had not yet grown strong." 
 
 " And she was detected ? " 
 
 u Oh, no, not detected ; not nearly so bad as 
 that. She came and told me the next day ; 
 and she then went and told all to whom she had 
 talked ; and when the court sat in judgment 
 she stood up and made public confession. 
 Then she condemned herself to the hospital for 
 half a year. I begged the judge that she should 
 not be permitted to sentence herself so severely; 
 but the judge thought the punishment none too 
 hard, and so let her go to the hospital the full 
 218 
 
The Truly Brave 
 
 time for which she had sentenced herself." 
 " For which she had sentenced herself ? " 
 " Yes. You see our hospital here for mental 
 maladies and physical ailments is the same. 
 We try to be even more gentle with those who 
 have maladies of the mind than those who have 
 ailments of the body ; for a man may lose a limb 
 and yet, if his mind is clear, he does not suffer 
 nearly so much as one with an afflicted mind. 
 Besides, a mental ailment, rare with us for 
 tunately, is much more subtile and hard to master 
 than a physical one. Take this case for 
 example. For generations back, her family, a 
 most noble Polish one, had been bitterly 
 impoverished ; and you can easily see how with 
 their pride and poverty together they trans 
 mitted their misery to this poor friend of mine 
 who is now serving out her time in the hospital." 
 He found the u hospital " a sort of summer 
 watering-place ; not a Newport or a Saratoga, 
 however. It was a Christian place, neither noisy 
 in the least nor devoted to any sort of folly to 
 attract attention. All the invalids, mental or 
 physical, from down in the valley were here. 
 The new mothers were in a similar retreat 
 219 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 further on. He found many people coming and 
 going, these fragrant pine-groves being cooler 
 and the air more invigorating than in the great 
 valley below. All the mental sick, " convicts " 
 we call them in Christian lands, kept themselves 
 at some sort of work in attending on the physi 
 cal sick. And yet the numerous visitors kept 
 heaping attention on the " convicts " ; more 
 attention, indeed, did they receive than those 
 who had only bodily ailments. 
 
 He was so enchanted with the humanity, the 
 heart, the real Christianity in all he saw here, 
 that his whole soul was rilled with exultation at 
 the possibilities of the future. 
 
 " You will have a city here, such a city, in 
 magnitude and glory, as the world has never 
 seen," he said, as they walked the hospital 
 grounds together. 
 
 Pausing for a moment, she raised her head 
 and answered: " It is possible. But cities, great 
 cities, as a rule, should not be." Then she said, 
 after a moment s silence: "True, we must have 
 centers. Each division of the earth, natural or 
 artificial, great or small, must have a common 
 center, a heart. The hands, the feet, all have 
 
The Truly Brave 
 
 their functions and they all have laws of health; 
 but with the means of transportation without 
 cost within the reach of all, great cities will not 
 be built. Population in the outside world is 
 growing denser because of the greed of land 
 lords and the folly of granting railway privileges, 
 which makes transportation difficult. With 
 our rapid free transit, our railways supported 
 out of the rental value of our land, we keep 
 our city like a garden, as you see. No, I would 
 sweep great cities like New York and London 
 from the face of the earth. We know that 
 sword and flood and flame have been against 
 cities from the first dawn of history. Pesti 
 lence, the very hand of God, has ever been 
 turned against all great cities. Children die in 
 cities, men and women are dwarfed in cities. 
 No great man has ever yet been born in a great 
 city. A city is a sin and a shame, a crime against 
 the human race. Each man must have his acre, 
 his vine and fig-tree, his place of retreat, his grove, 
 his temple, his shrine where he may pray, may 
 meditate, may be all himself." 
 
 In the cool of the evening they took the cars 
 for the city. 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 "As time goes by," said the good angel on 
 their descent to the city, " we shall have much 
 less mental sickness. Take for example this 
 poor friend of mine, who, happily, is now about 
 to be restored to us entirely healed. Had she, 
 and her ancestors as well, been born and reared 
 in these restful ways, no such sickness would 
 ever have overtaken her. As for bodily sick 
 ness, that is partly our own fault ; but death, 
 all know, is not to be avoided and should not 
 be undesired. Yet I surely think that mental 
 sickness can be swept from the earth. You 
 remember the poor nude idiots who used to swim 
 out to us every few days as we sailed up the 
 Nile ? They call these poor creatures God s 
 people there, you remember, and the boatmen 
 feed them and care for them as best they can. 
 We, that is, civilized Europe and America, lock 
 them up ! Out here we hope to go back to first 
 causes and help nature to make the crooked 
 straight. 
 
 " And bodily illness," she continued, " is not 
 to be wondered at when we consider what man 
 has done, and is still doing in most of the world, 
 to destroy himself. Look at France ! Russia ! 
 
The Truly Brave 
 
 Sixteen hours of toil in all sorts of weather, and 
 such food ! food that is scarcely fit for wild 
 beasts. Still man must have exercise if he 
 would have a healthy body. I observed, when 
 in prison with my poor father, that all who 
 were confined esteemed a few hours of exercise 
 in the open air above their bread. Every man, 
 as a rule, who is shut up in prison, spends from 
 four to ten hours daily in pacing up and down. 
 So it became clear to me that man s body de 
 manded at least six hours of exercise. Less 
 than this would be fatal to his health. A great 
 excess of this would weary him, tax him too 
 heavily, and so leave a loophole by which 
 disease might enter. Now we find here that 
 two hours of work in the fields and gardens by 
 each man will more than feed his family. This 
 amazes you, I know." 
 
 u He may work twenty-four hours in a week, 
 twenty-four days of a European laborer s work 
 in a whole year and have all the rest of the 
 year for study, for art, for development ? " 
 asked the man. 
 
 " If he does that work daily, yes. But we 
 allow no taskmasters here ; all is voluntary. 
 "3 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 After each day of public work a man goes back 
 to his house, among his bees, birds, roses, vines, 
 with his children, and all the other delightful 
 things that go to refresh mind and body and 
 make interesting the spot he has set apart as his 
 home." 
 
 Shortly after this delightful day, as the weather 
 grew warmer in the city, they once more visited 
 the pleasant and refreshing pines on the moun 
 tain-side. And here they walked and they talked 
 as before. 
 
 " Would you care to walk a little further on 
 among the pines ? " 
 
 She said this seriously, looking in his face in 
 a quiet and inquiring way, and for answer he 
 moved on at her side in silence. 
 
 Half an hour, up the hill and over the hill, 
 through the tall, open pines, and he saw before 
 them, in a wooded depression of the landscape 
 through which a little mountain stream wound 
 in the long, strong grass, a few scattering graves 
 where roses grew in careless profusion. Some 
 deer were feeding on the slope of the hill a little 
 beyond, and beyond these, higher on the sloping 
 hill where the pines stood dark and dense, he 
 224 
 
The Truly Brave 
 
 saw what at first seemed to be several large, 
 old-fashioned marble tombs. 
 
 " No, they are not tombs," she said softly. 
 " These are simply heaps of sweet-smelling pine- 
 wood kept ready for men and women of 
 advanced thought whom we have among us." 
 
 " Funeral pyres ? " 
 
 " Even so. You will understand that here 
 with us in this new order of things there is 
 nothing arbitrary. Minds have different degrees 
 of development. Some have ascended high, 
 some higher still ; while many of us stand at 
 the bottom of the hill and see the plain of life 
 only from the dead level of custom. And so 
 each looks at life, and death also, from his or 
 her own standpoint. Some of us still want 
 priests to lean upon ; some of us still at times 
 are weak enough to want to worship idols or 
 even the golden calf; and so, equal freedom is 
 accorded all, for out of freedom will come real 
 development, and every secure step upward 
 must be of gradual ascent ; because there is 
 danger of the weak growing weary and of falter 
 ing by the way or turning back." 
 
 u Ah, I see," he said. " Here conspicuously 
 
 15 ^^s 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 in the front are the graves of those who claim 
 attention even in the tomb." 
 
 " That is it," she sadly answered, as she 
 looked about and on up the hill beyond into the 
 deep, dark shadows. " But up yonder, in the 
 silence and obscurity, the remains of those who 
 have outgrown such folly, like Charles Dickens, 
 Lord Houghton, and others who begged for 
 simple burial, are laid on the fragrant wood as 
 soon as may be after the breath has left the 
 body, in the same garments, in the garments in 
 which death finds them. A flash, a flame ; and 
 they are of the clouds and ashes." 
 
 226 
 
XXIII. Going 
 
 WHAT if we all lay dead below ; 
 
 Lay as the grass lies, cold and dead 
 In God s own holy shroud of snow, 
 
 With snow-white stones at foot and head, 
 With all earth dead and shrouded white 
 As clouds that cross the moon at night ? 
 
 What if that infidel some night 
 
 Could then rise up and see how dead, 
 
 How wholly dead and out of sight 
 
 All things with snows sown foot and head 
 
 And lost winds wailing up and down 
 
 The emptied fields and emptied town ? 
 
 I think that grand old infidel 
 
 Would rub his hands with fiendish glee, 
 
 And say : "I knew it, knew it well ! 
 I knew that death was destiny ; 
 
 I ate, I drank, I mocked at God, 
 
 Then as the grass was, and the sod." 
 
 Ah me, the grasses and the sod, 
 
 They are my preachers. Hear them preach 
 
 When they forget the shroud, and God 
 Lifts up these blades of grass to teach 
 
 The resurrection ! Who shall say 
 
 What infidel can speak as they ? 
 
 NEARLY half a year had swept by. 
 " You are thinking of going away," she 
 said, as they walked together by the great 
 fountain that burst up from the old Toltec ruins 
 
 227 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 near her door ; for she was not strong enough 
 to walk further now. It was in the afternoon. 
 
 " You knew my thoughts, then ? " 
 
 " You are going away if, if I go." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I will go with you." She said this, not 
 sadly, but almost cheerfully, as she leaned 
 heavily on his arm on turning to her door. 
 
 There were those here who made one in love 
 with old age ; but this woman was making him 
 in love with death. 
 
 " You are going back to the work that is 
 before you ! I will go with you." And that 
 is all she said about his going or staying ; but 
 he felt that it was her desire that he should go. 
 
 " I know so many weak and weary people 
 who would be glad to come to this Paradise," 
 he said. " As for myself, I am strong now. 
 I will go back to my work, but shall I not be 
 permitted to send some whom I know, out of 
 the shadow, to this fervid sunlight of yours ? " 
 
 She raised her hand with effort, and, pointing 
 
 to some pale weeds that grew in a dark and 
 
 shaded corner beneath the broad banana-leaves, 
 
 she bade him, more by sign than word, to pull 
 
 228 
 
Going 
 
 them from the ground and lay them before her 
 in the sun. He did so, and they laid their 
 drooping heads down on the hot sands and died. 
 
 " You see," she said ; " and yet our choicest 
 flowers are only cultivated weeds. Pull them 
 up and place them in the sun suddenly, and you 
 do not help them ; you simply kill them. It is 
 well to have great examples like this, our City 
 Beautiful, but the world must improve itself 
 slowly, naturally, by force of the example we 
 have set of freedom, truth, and justice. No, 
 we must have strong pillars, like the Pilgrim 
 Fathers, and, God willing, we shall have a 
 temple reared in time that will shelter all." 
 
 She rested for a long time now. Finally she 
 said : " You will go up to the hospital and 
 remain remain until you see a sign." 
 
 He bowed silently in assent ; for she was too 
 near the other world for him to question now 
 or make any protest. Then she said : 
 
 " I like those people up there ; I like the 
 guilty ones, those whom you call convicts ; but 
 we do not call them that. Why, when one of 
 your poor unfortunate people is accused of 
 crime, the State, the State s attorney, the whole 
 
 129 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 power of the State is exerted, and no pains or 
 money spared to prove that man guilty, as if 
 it were a good thing for the State to have a 
 guilty man ! Ah, how you forget that it is 
 better that ten guilty ones escape than that one 
 innocent man should suffer/ With us the 
 attorney for the State does his best to make it 
 appear that the accused is not guilty." 
 
 She was exhausted now and breathed with 
 effort. Yet it seemed as if with her last breath 
 she must teach this most important lesson. 
 After a time she added : 
 
 " What a pity that all the State should array 
 itself against one man, bound in irons, in an iron 
 tomb, as if it were a glorious thing for the State 
 to find one of its people with mind so weak or 
 morals so weak that he fell into the pit of temp 
 tation." She was silent a long time, then said : 
 
 " You will go now. Good-bye again j good 
 bye." 
 
 He arose and stood before her. He fell on 
 his knees and took her hand. " You feel cer 
 tain, confident, confident that Christ is the 
 Savior of the world ? " he cried ; for he felt that 
 she was surely dying. 
 
 130 
 
Going 
 
 Steadily, and with a strange light in her eyes, 
 as if it might be the light of another world, she 
 looked him long and silently in the face. Then 
 she said slowly and in a voice so soft and low : 
 
 " Yes, yes, Jesus Christ is the Savior of the 
 world ; but Jesus Christ died to save man from 
 man, not to save man from God." 
 
 He kissed her hand tenderly in silence, and 
 in tears passed out. 
 
 231 
 
XXIV. Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 AND WHO the bravest of the brave ; 
 
 The bravest hero ever born ? 
 Twas one who dared a felon s grave, 
 
 Who dared to bear the scorn of scorn. 
 Nay, more than this ; when sword was drawn 
 
 And vengeance waited for His word, 
 He looked with pitying eyes upon 
 
 The scene, and said : " Put up thy sword." 
 Oh God ! could one be found to-day 
 
 As brave to do, as brave to say ? 
 
 " Put up thy sword into his sheath." 
 
 Put up thy sword, put up thy sword ! 
 By Cedron s brook thus spake beneath 
 
 The olive-trees our valiant Lord, 
 Spake calm and king-like. Sword and stave 
 
 And torch, and stormy men of death 
 Made clamor. Yet he spake not, save 
 
 With loving word and patient breath, 
 The peaceful olive-boughs beneath : 
 * Put up thy sword into his sheath." 
 
 ABASHED that he had remained so ^ 
 knowing as he did that this inspired soul 
 was about to enter upon another life, the man 
 hastened to take the first conveyance to the 
 mountains of pine. 
 
 " You will remain there till you see a sign." 
 He kept saying this as he went his way speak- 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 ing to no one. He had been with her. His 
 soul, his whole self, this day at least, must be 
 his own and inviolate. He did not go directly 
 to the hospital, to men, but to the woods, to 
 God. 
 
 Some scarlet berries, red with the blood of 
 the dying autumn, wreathed the moss-made tomb 
 of a prone monarch of the mountains, on which 
 he sat. All was silent, so silent, save a far, 
 faint melody that came up the mountain-side 
 through the pines, came fitfully on the wind, 
 as one that is weary and would go home to 
 rest. 
 
 The tawny carpet of pine-quills grew golden 
 as the sun lay level and in spars and bars and 
 beams about him. The huge and lofty trunks 
 of the mighty pine-trees on the mountains 
 round about took on a hue of gold as the sun 
 fell down. The foliage all about grew red, 
 then gold, then yellow. The carpet of pine- 
 quills, reaching miles and miles away on either 
 hand far up the mountains beyond, became gold, 
 a broken, billowy sea of molten gold. And as 
 he sat there, throned amid this mobile sea of fra 
 grant yellow, of color so perfect that it was 
 233 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 not only color, but form ; form, perfume and 
 melody also; he not only saw this color, he 
 heard it. An hour passed. 
 
 Then suddenly, as be thought of her, he saw a 
 form, at first vaguely, dimly, the yellow form and 
 comely shape of a desert lion standing, waiting, 
 removed from him but by a little space. 
 
 I know not why this type of strength, defiant of 
 custom and restraint, should have again appeared. 
 I only say that it was so, and pass on. All things 
 in life and death lie in circles. A woman s weak 
 ness is her strength. 
 
 And even as he looked, the sinking sun came 
 softly through the forest boughs, a long, slanting 
 shaft of light, and laid a sword of fading fire at 
 his feet. 
 
 Day had surrendered to night, light to dark 
 ness, mortality to immortality. 
 
 He remained alone all night in the warm 
 woods, but saw no further sign. It was enough. 
 
 With the dawn there came up the mountain 
 side the sweetest, saddest melodies ever known. 
 It was the funeral train. 
 
 He took an old man aside. They rested a 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 time beneath the pines. He implored him to 
 tell all, all. What did she say ? What did 
 she do ? All, all, tell me all ! " But the old 
 man seemed dazed. He kept silent for some 
 time. At last he spoke : 
 
 " I went to her immediately as you left her. 
 I can hardly recall her words. They were 
 words of fire and gold. Prove to me, to the 
 world, that man shall surely rise, I cried. She 
 half turned away her face as in reproach at first, 
 but soon, looking tenderly at me, she said in a 
 low, firm voice : c Nay, I cannot quite prove to 
 you that man shall rise after death. I cannot 
 quite prove to you that yonder setting sun will 
 rise to-morrow ; but I surely, surely believe it 
 will rise ; and then she made a sign that I must 
 leave her to meet God, alone. After a little 
 time young musicians came as had been their 
 custom, and played before her door under the 
 palm-trees. And then there came many singers, 
 and they sang, sang as the musicians played, and 
 the sun went down. Then suddenly we heard 
 her voice, like a thread of gold in the woof of 
 harmony, woven in with a most cunning hand. 
 We had never heard her sing before. It was, 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 perhaps, her first as it was her last song : the 
 dying swan. 
 
 " There are many birds and of many hues, 
 as you well know, in the foliage of the court 
 there. Well, as the song ceased and the music 
 died away, an old man, older and better than I, 
 and so able to see more of better things than I 
 can see, saw a bird, a wide-winged bird, and 
 white like snow. And after circling above our 
 heads, it flew out through the wide, high trees 
 into the falling night. That was all. We 
 bowed low our heads and wept in pity for 
 ourselves." 
 
 Our city-builder of the mountain-side remem 
 bering having heard her deplore the sad habit of 
 the world in staring at the wan, worn faces of 
 the helpless dead, overcame this last desire, as 
 he had overcome others through her teachings 
 and example, and saw her face of clay never 
 more. 
 
 And yet he felt, knew, knew positively all the 
 while, that she would come to him, sooner or 
 later, if he only kept his soul refined and fit to 
 see her ; and more than that, he knew that she 
 would come to him in her perfection, as she was 
 236 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 when she touched the high-tide mark of health 
 and perfection of form and face ; for this is in 
 the order of nature. The tide shall ever touch 
 its topmost limit. The human soul shall not 
 be less than the sea. 
 
 Knowing all this, knowing that she would 
 have given back to her all that had been taken 
 away, and that she, and all others who love 
 sincerely, would begin the next life at the high- 
 tide mark in this, and knowing, surely knowing 
 that he should see her thus, how careful was he 
 to say naught, do naught that would make him 
 less worthy to lift his face to hers. 
 
 They bore her form up, up to her mountain 
 side, mantled close in the robes in which she 
 died, and none were cruel enough to seek to 
 look into her tired face. 
 
 There was a depression in the great heap of 
 sweet-smelling pine that lay furthest up the hill 
 beyond the hospital, and here they laid the body. 
 
 A flame, a long, vapory cloud of smoke toss 
 ing to the pine-tops, and all turned away. No 
 more cost and no more care, a little heap of 
 ashes ! and around the edges of this little burned 
 237 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 spot tall, slim grasses came to stand in circle 
 soon, and shy, wild flowers joined their hands 
 and drooped their heads there tearfully when 
 the rains had come. 
 
 u So you are going away to-night ? Well, 
 the Gulf Stream of the upper seas is reversed 
 at this season. The Japan currents flow 
 towards us in the first few months, but later 
 in the year, as now, Alaska draws on us for 
 heat and things are reversed. You will have 
 quite as pleasant sailing back as when you 
 came." 
 
 This was the venerable man who had seen 
 the cattle rise up in the fields at night, as if God 
 was walking by. So fine were his senses that 
 he had only to come into your atmosphere to 
 know your thought. They were walking up 
 the mountain. Without a word the man lifted 
 his eyes. The car of the air-ship swung graceful 
 as a pine-cone in the gathering wind at the high 
 platform from which he had descended on com 
 ing to the place. They passed up together in 
 silence. What need of words ? 
 
 Grasping the old man s hand, he stepped 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 within the car and was about taking his seat 
 when, with a boom as if being propelled by 
 sound, the car bounded away above the clouds 
 and held her course strong and steady toward 
 the north. 
 
 He sank into his seat, bowed his head, and 
 moaned : " She said she would be with me ! " 
 
 After a time he lifted his face, for he felt that 
 he was not alone, and lo ! there she sat before 
 him, in all the splendor of youth and strength 
 and divinity of presence. All the majesty of 
 perfect womanhood was with her now. Never, 
 indeed, had he seen her so radiantly, so imperi 
 ously beautiful. The same sweet touch of 
 tenderness, the same pathos and pity in the 
 Madonna face, it is true ; but over and above 
 this there was a sense of strength and directness 
 and immortality, such as you feel when the sun 
 is rising. 
 
 She did not speak ; for oh, how futile, lame, 
 harsh, and angular are words ! The use of 
 words shall pass away, is passing. 
 
 Why, know you not soul speaks to soul ? 
 I say the use of words shall pass 
 Words are but fragments of the glass, 
 
 But silence is the perfect whole. 
 239 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 She did not speak, but her soul continually 
 said to his soul : " The kingdom of heaven is at 
 hand." And it was said as if in a great court 
 of woods and falling waters, with walls of sap 
 phire, where hung, in letters of fire and gold, 
 the Sermon on the Mount and the Lord s 
 Prayer. 
 
 He did not mistake their meaning. He would 
 go forward and these should guide him still. 
 All Israel was forty years in the wilderness, and 
 he had been but five. Surely he should, he 
 could, and he would gather strength and go 
 forward. For she had annihilated the vast 
 space that had been so long between heaven and 
 earth and had brought them almost together 
 " The kingdom of heaven is at hand." 
 
 She did not speak ; and yet her soul spoke as 
 certainly in its calm, sweet fashion, wisely, 
 silently ; the wisdom of earth in earthly things, 
 the glory, the beauty, the peace of heaven 
 over all. 
 
 " I leave my peace with you." " The king 
 dom of heaven is at hand." 
 
 And her soul said to his soul : " Service is the 
 handmaiden of heaven. Let the Christian run 
 240 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 forward with the Sermon on the Mount in hand, 
 swift-footed to meet her. Only see to it that 
 the newly-emancipated slave does not fall into a 
 deeper servitude. For man, intoxicated with 
 opportunity, still believes that opulence is happi 
 ness. They are fastening again the broken 
 chains, and gathering gold as never was gold 
 gathered before. 
 
 " It was the toiler, not the money-changer, 
 who taught the lightnings to talk, created light 
 out of space, and from the airy, white vapors of 
 heaven called into existence the thundering 
 black cavalry of commerce by land and by sea. 
 Take care that this emancipated toiler is not 
 made the slave of his own creations by blind, 
 intoxicated money-changers. See to it that all 
 toil, that none but the helpless live on the toil 
 of others." 
 
 Such were the woman s thoughts, words, as 
 they seemed to sail and sail by the porch of 
 heaven above the clouds as before. Then they 
 passed down, down and through the clouds, and 
 it was almost light. 
 
 And daring to look full in her face by the 
 coming light he saw a star, then the star only, 
 1 6 241 
 
The Building of the City Beautiful 
 
 the bright and beautiful morning star to the 
 east, through the dove-colored leaves of his 
 olive-trees. 
 
 Then as he grew stronger and looked more 
 steadily he saw the star fade into a dim halo 
 from out of which appeared the divinely beau 
 tiful, earnest and prophetic face of his venerable 
 mother. She was looking at him as one who 
 sits at a bedside and tenderly watches the face 
 of some poor sufferer. Then, as if taking up 
 in the full dawn the word Failure where he had 
 laid it down in darkness, she said softly : 
 
 " My son, there is no failure, there can be no 
 failure for those who really try. The only fail 
 ure possible in life is the failure to try, and per 
 sistently try, for the best. The good, the glory, 
 the consolation of it all is in the ennobling effort. 
 Let us bravely leave results to Him." 
 
 The man at once arose and stood by the beau 
 tiful mother with the soft voice and deep, seer 
 eyes and was filled and thrilled with her patient 
 strength and splendid courage. 
 
 And he joyed there on his stony steep and 
 went to his toil with content and courage and 
 a broad, deep charity in his heart. A dove sang 
 242 
 
Put Up Thy Sword 
 
 from an olive-tree, the dove and the olive-branch 
 together as of old, and the man sang with the 
 dove that day and all days. For had he not seen 
 her ? Whether she was of heaven or of earth, 
 who should say ? But surely he had been with 
 her entirely, and this was the unuttered song of 
 his heart. He sang silently, for what human 
 voice can approach the plaintive and tender 
 voice of the dove ? But here is the song of 
 his heart: 
 
 Come listen, O love, to the voice of the dove, 
 
 Come barken and hear him say : 
 " There are many to-morrows, my love, my love, 
 There is only one to-day. * 
 
 And all day long you can hear him say : 
 
 " This day in purple is rolled ; 
 And the baby stars of the Milky Way : 
 They are cradled in cradles of gold. " 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed at THE BRANDT PRESS, Trenton^ New Jertey, U. S. A. 
 
 2/13 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 RENEWALS ONLY TEL. NO. 642-3405 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 I 
 
 m 
 m 9? 
 
 CD; , 
 Ott> 
 
 c 
 
 OCD 
 
 f m 
 
 i O 
 
 =; i 
 
 
 
 
 
 01 fH 
 
 LD 21A-38m-5, 68 
 (J401slO)476B 
 
 j. Disc. APR 3W 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
GENERAL UBRWY -U-C. BERKELEY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY