ition of things which we were made
for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will
not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven
of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to
gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were
not?

There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to strive
after perfection. One day it came into his mind to make a staff. Having
considered that in an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into
a perfect work time does not enter, he said to himself, It shall be
perfect in all respects, though I should do nothing else in my life.
He proceeded instantly to the forest for wood, being resolved that it
should not be made of unsuitable material; and as he searched for and
rejected stick after stick, his friends gradually deserted him, for they
grew old in their works and died, but he grew not older by a moment. His
singleness of purpose and resolution, and his elevated piety, endowed
him, without his knowledge, with perennial youth. As he made no
compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a
distance because he could not overcome him. Before he had found a stock
in all respects suitable the city of Kouroo was a hoary ruin, and he
sat on one of its mounds to peel the stick. Before he had given it the
proper shape the dynasty of the Candahars was at an end, and with the
point of the stick he wrote the name of the last of that race in
the sand, and then resumed his work. By the time he had smoothed and
polished the staff Kalpa was no longer the pole-star; and ere he had
put on the ferule and the head adorned with precious stones, Brahma
had awoke and slumbered many times. But why do I stay to mention these
things? When the finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly
expanded before the eyes of the astonished artist into the fairest of
all the creations of Brahma. He had made a new system in making a staff,
a world with full and fair proportions; in which, though the old cities
and dynasties had passed away, fairer and more glorious ones had taken
their places. And now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his
feet, that, for him and his work, the former lapse of time had been
an illusion, and that no more time had elapsed than is required for a
single scintillation from the brain of Brahma to fall on and inflame the
tinder of a mortal brain. The materia