ior to the one sold. A seven-million-dollar city hall became thirty
cents in twenty-eight seconds. Because the mortar was not honest, a
thousand walls crashed down and scores of lives were snuffed out. There
is something, after all, in the contention of a few religionists that the
San Francisco earthquake was a punishment for sin. It was a punishment
for sin; but it was not for sin against God. The people of San Francisco
sinned against themselves.

An honest house tells the truth about itself. There is a house here in
Glen Ellen. It stands on a corner. It is built of beautiful red stone.
Yet it is not beautiful. On three sides the stone is joined and pointed.
The fourth side is the rear. It faces the back yard. The stone is not
pointed. It is all a smudge of dirty mortar, with here and there bricks
worked in when the stone gave out. The house is not what it seems. It
is a lie. All three of the walls spend their time lying about the fourth
wall. They keep shouting out that the fourth wall is as beautiful as
they. If I lived long in that house I should not be responsible for my
morals. The house is like a man in purple and fine linen, who hasn't had
a bath for a month. If I lived long in that house I should become a
dandy and cut out bathing--for the same reason, I suppose, that an
African is black and that an Eskimo eats whale-blubber. I shall not
build a house like that house.

Last year I started to build a barn. A man who was a liar undertook to
do the stonework and concrete work for me. He could not tell the truth
to my face; he could not tell the truth in his work. I was building for
posterity. The concrete foundations were four feet wide and sunk three
and one-half feet into the earth. The stone walls were two feet thick
and nine feet high. Upon them were to rest the great beams that were to
carry all the weight of hay and the forty tons of the roof. The man who
was a liar made beautiful stone walls. I used to stand alongside of them
and love them. I caressed their massive strength with my hands. I
thought about them in bed, before I went to sheep. And they were lies.

Came the earthquake. Fortunately the rest of the building of the barn
had been postponed. The beautiful stone walls cracked in all directions.
I started, to repair, and discovered the whole enormous lie. The walls
were shells. On each face were beautiful, massive stones--on edge. The
inside was hollow. This holl