event. In
the first place, a mighty stone was dislodged from its connections, and
lifted, unbroken, from the quarry. This was a feat from which our modern
stone-workers shrink dismayed. The Egyptians appear to have handled
these huge monoliths as our artisans handle hearthstones and doorsteps,
for the land actually bristled with such giant columns. They were shaped
and finished as nicely as if they were breastpins for the Titans to
wear, and on their polished surfaces were engraved in imperishable
characters the records they were erected to preserve.

Europe and America borrow these noble productions of African art and
power, and find them hard enough to handle after they have succeeded
in transporting them to Rome, or London, or New York. Their simplicity,
grandeur, imperishability, speaking symbolism, shame all the pretentious
and fragile works of human art around them. The obelisk has no joints
for the destructive agencies of nature to attack; the pyramid has no
masses hanging in unstable equilibrium, and threatening to fall by their
own weight in the course of a thousand or two years.

America says the Father of his Country must have a monument worthy of
his exalted place in history. What shall it be? A temple such as Athens
might have been proud to rear upon her Acropolis? An obelisk such as
Thebes might have pointed out with pride to the strangers who found
admission through her hundred gates? After long meditation and the
rejection of the hybrid monstrosities with which the nation was menaced,
an obelisk is at last decided upon. How can it be made grand and
dignified enough to be equal to the office assigned it? We dare not
attempt to carve a single stone from the living rock,--all our modern
appliances fail to make the task as easy to us as it seems to have
been to the early Egyptians. No artistic skill is required in giving
a four-square tapering figure to a stone column. If we cannot shape a
solid obelisk of the proper dimensions, we can build one of separate
blocks. How can we give it the distinction we demand for it? The nation
which can brag that it has "the biggest show on earth" cannot boast a
great deal in the way of architecture, but it can do one thing,--it can
build an obelisk that shall be taller than any structure now standing
which the hand of man has raised. Build an obelisk! How different the
idea of such a structure from that of the unbroken, unjointed prismatic
shaft, one perfect whole, as co