--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.
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