n,--said the Master;--I not only begin
with the precept of Descartes, but I hold all my opinions involving any
chain of reasoning always open to revision.

--I confess that I smiled internally to hear him say that. The old
Master thinks he is open to conviction on all subjects; but if you meddle
with some of his notions and don't get tossed on his horns as if a bull
had hold of you, I should call you lucky.

--You don't mean you doubt everything?--I said.

--What do you think I question everything for, the Master replied,--if I
never get any answers? You've seen a blind man with a stick, feeling his
way along? Well, I am a blind man with a stick, and I find the world
pretty full of men just as blind as I am, but without any stick. I try
the ground to find out whether it is firm or not before I rest my weight
on it; but after it has borne my weight, that question at least is
answered. It very certainly was strong enough once; the presumption is
that it is strong enough now. Still the soil may have been undermined,
or I may have grown heavier. Make as much of that as you will. I say I
question everything; but if I find Bunker Hill Monument standing as
straight as when I leaned against it a year or ten years ago, I am not
very much afraid that Bunker Hill will cave in if I trust myself again on
the soil of it.

I glanced off, as one often does in talk.

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

It won't be standing,--the Master said.---We are poor bunglers compared
to those old Egyptians. There are no joints in one of their obelisks.
They are our masters in more ways than we know of, and in more ways than
some of us are willing to know. That old Lawgiver wasn't learned in all
the wisdom of the Egyptians for nothing. It scared people well a couple
of hundred years ago when Sir John Marsham and Dr. John Spencer ventured
to tell their stories about the sacred ceremonies of the Egyptian
priesthood. People are beginning to find out now that you can't study
any religio