the world. I remembered how I worked with another boy, at odd afternoons

stolen from study and paid for with stripes, to undermine and start from

its bed an immense boulder that rested upon the edge of that hilltop; I

remembered how, one Saturday afternoon, we gave three hours of honest

effort to the task, and saw at last that our reward was at hand; I

remembered how we sat down, then, and wiped the perspiration away, and

waited to let a picnic party get out of the way in the road below--and

then we started the boulder. It was splendid. It went crashing down the

hillside, tearing up saplings, mowing bushes down like grass, ripping and

crushing and smashing every thing in its path--eternally splintered and

scattered a wood pile at the foot of the hill, and then sprang from the

high bank clear over a dray in the road--the negro glanced up once and

dodged--and the next second it made infinitesimal mince-meat of a frame

cooper-shop, and the coopers swarmed out like bees. Then we said it was

perfectly magnificent, and left. Because the coopers were starting up

the hill to inquire.

Still, that mountain, prodigious as it was, was nothing to the Pyramid of

Cheops. I could conjure up no comparison that would convey to my mind a

satisfactory comprehension of the magnitude of a pile of monstrous stones

that covered thirteen acres of ground and stretched upward four hundred

and eighty tiresome feet, and so I gave it up and walked down to the

Sphynx.

After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great face was so

sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of

717

The Innocents Abroad