title: Who builds? A romance ... Dedicated to brother builders of the 32⁰ and 33⁰ of Ancient Scottish rites and to builders yet more ancient the world throughout.
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A B O MA JSr CU: Completed in the month of Addar (which is the last half of February and the first half of March). The ‘^Protecting Deity of Addar — the Seven Great Gods.^^ The cosmogonic myth of Addar — “The return to the cultivation of the Earth after the cataclysm.” DEDICATED TO BROTHER BUILDERS OF THE 32=> AND S3^ OF ANCIENT SCOTTISH RITES AND TO BUILDERS YET MORE ANCIENT THE WORLD THROUGHOUT. Written and Finished in 1903. Copyrighted in 1909. Evelken Laura Mason, If Brookline, Massachusetts. 4 St. Paul Street. \ rfVi Rac*3i'i/ed from y right Offio®. 2lMy’09 LIBRftSY ot CONGRESS Two Gooi"^ APR 12 1W9 Copyriijnl.' _ y j CUSS XXc. ■ COi'- FORE-WORD. « When I saw this, I wondered to see such great and noble things. And again I admired on account of these Virgins who were so handsome and delicate and who stood with such firmness and constancy, as if they could carry the whole Heaven.” — Hermes. \ h “Yet all are born with the same portion of divinity within them, which we call soul. With much more than half of humanity the germ remains always a germ; always weighed down by the lymphatic, materialistic propensities of the husk — the body.” INTRODUCTION. T O the question, ^^Who Builds?’^ this story essays to an- swer, ^^He or she builds who unflinchingly holds to the architectural design which is inspiringly set before him or her, by Indwelling Power. For this Holy Spirit, this Indwelling Power, this Kara Avis, real and never forsaking, when it has free course and is glori- fied by intelligent obedience, wins each individual soul to its best development: and, therefore, in-so-far, wins the Race on its upward way. The philosophy of the story recognizes that step by step with these unfolding aspirations, each soul has to deal with the results of the deeds of Hhe undead-self’ — sometimes called ^ karma,’ sometimes inherited weakness’ and sometimes Hhe old Adam.’ And this philosophy emphazises the fact that ignorance relative to the results of one’s previous incarnation ‘is not bliss’; nor is it ‘folly to be wise’ concerning the results of one’s past lives. Because the awakening of such latent knowledges concerning the results of past-mental-and-moral- accumulations, not only renders one sympathetic with persons who are struggling up out of lower planes of development but secures the retention of childhood’s alert longing for the next bit of needed Wisdom: awakening in the child’s soul, subtle memories, in a way that brings him, with courageous gladness, to go on with the business of character building, in the spirit set forth in the hymn ^Thiis far Life’s Lord has led us on. ^Thus far Life’s Power prolongs our days. ^And every evening shall make known ‘Some fresh memorial of Life’s Grace.’ The story emphasizes the fact that the average child of this epoch is born possessed of a mentality so highly vitalized by Introduction V the Spiritually-electrizing current of this Great Day, that, from the first, consciously or unconsciously, if unmeddled with, he or she takes up the continuous work of character- building, just as a person of high achievement, each morning takes up ‘work’ from where at slumber-time the night before it had been peacefully laid aside. It assumes that, an ego who is made conscious that his existence is foundationed on such and such passed experiences (good, bad, or indifferent) naturally turns, alertly receptive of The Supernal Influence, which, invited by heartfelt-childlike prayer, becomes — not only the attendant Instructor but — the Constructor of body, brain and being: as, working ^in and through^ such a rever- ently intelligent recipient. It directs and concentrates that ego^s thoughts on Virtue, Truth, Justice and Freedom. — Thus building (by use of this concentrated-Thought-food) cell on cell and tissue on tissue of brain and body: till, 'the whole man is renewed’ seven fold: (time-given) with the result toward which St. Paul yearned, when he said, "That which is in part, shall be done away, being swallowed up in that which is to come.” The story opens at that crisis in the beginning of the Nine- ties when seen and unseen worlds, running together, came in like a flood on the souls of many other deluged mortals; — be- sides the five from whom, ordinary resources seemed sud- denly taken away, by Archibald Landseer’s practicalization of the theory, that, an act done with decisive regard to the ultimate end to be gained, but tends to the final construction of What-is-to-be. A theory which he held, therefore justifies a man in flinging in himself, or any one else, in order to bridge a chasm: — if the bridging of it, by any means secures the swifter attainment of a proposed-End. Lamed often had had to meet Archibald’s precipitant, ruth- less tendencies, by her certainty that, in nature, no unnatural chasms exist: for that what seemed so, were but serviceable results, pointing to like serviceable other results; which re- quired scientific scrutiny; not sacrilegious slaughter. But her sight of the fact, that failure could come only from a confused understanding of the thing to be done, was little less annoying to Landseer’s precipitant-pugnacity than was her extreme alertness against either having a 'confused understanding of VI Introduction the thing to be done/ — or, of submitting to the unnecessary- failures, that result from acting, while under a confused under- standing of the thing to be done. How terrible then, had been to her, the years in which she had lived amid misrepresenting-complications, her hold on the underlying facts of which, had but made her spiritually- scientific-scrutiny of these facts to appear to be more a matter of excessive self-reference and antagonism than a matter of her sight of facts vitally worthy of attention ? But with old-fashioned carelessness, she had vowed obedi- ence to a man who demanded obedience from his wife: — just that: and a (to him) injurious self-effacement. So, two equal forces had met. Inertia had set in. For to her, prosperity, to be of worth, included that which would enable her personally to build for posterity (as she knew she, by nature could, and therefore must build) by holding to that Integrity of Conscience which allies Individual iNtelligence with that Omni-Science in which — Age after Age, there is no ‘Variableness nor shadow of turning.^ To possess more and more abundantly this conscious Union with Omni-Science so as to more and more empower her children with its Affluence — that, was her aim. But — two forces had met, causing her to lapse into that silence, which well befalls those, who wisely await the current of outer events: though even their silence comes to be misleading: as it then appears to be but part of ‘the general conspiracy-of-silence’ concerning the fundamental facts of the evolution of Humanity. For years all that had remained for her, was, with courteous, discriminative-endurance, to do duty on the home-spot where — in time she might thus come to reign in joy. Her strength lay in the fact that she was possessed of this power of dis- criminative-endurance. It was her wealth. It was hers by Karma, and, by and through long lines of ancestry; belonging as she did to the opposition parties: who — whether Jehovists or Eloihimists: Brahmans or Vishnaites: Guelph or Ghibelline: Worshippers of Osiris or Isis: Protestants or Catholics — for thousands of years, had each inclined to make opposers walk the plank set for them, much as of old, pirates had made re- fractory prisoners, walk the plank whose end was in the sea. But she had ascended from those ancestors up to cool, sci- Introduction Vll entific heights : from whence, now looking, she reviewed the ways trodden by those who possibly had had to fight for (or else be knocked off of) the little elevations whereon they wished to self-sovereignly Home themselves and their Mental- heirs and representatives: while seeking to attain to the prac- ticalization of their Spiritual insights of Hhe Possible’; — though in doing it, they had to suffer hardship, even in the keeping of their foothold on the Rock of that mental-isolation: commonly incidental to the gaining of that Self-Sovereignty — without which nothing. And as had done some of her ancestors, so now did Lamed: as she stood on the ‘rock of Ages’: keeping firm-foot-hold on it; and firm head-and hand- hold on the children; as, philosophically studying their past, they too were thus prepared for this then, ‘ Oncoming Day of Disciplinary-Disast er . ’ A day, to the arrival of which, she hopefully had looked forward: knowing that — if her courage did not fail her — she then would be able to use for the world The Results which she had brought out of the spiritual crisis through which she had passed. Revealing to younger-souls that the Elder Brother’s Union with Real Spirit, had included a step up out of the possibility of further subjection to those mere animal magnetisms which are so antipathetic to the attainment of allegiance to The ‘Angel of The Covenant’! The Angel who, through all those dark days, had ‘talked to her of righteous- ness, of bountifulness, of chastity and of piety’: and whose voice, ‘hearing,’ had caused her to listen: and listening, had enabled her to understand and to do, the Will of Wisdom.’ All this had come to Lamed (and in their degree) to the rest of the five, on whom sudden disaster seemed to have fallen at the opening of this story. A story, the philosophy of which is supposed to show that, when womanhood shall be enabled unflinchingly to sustain Intellectual-Union with the ‘ Spirit-of-Spirits ’ (the breath-of- lives) then, the Affluence of this Spirit — as It is breathed forth in thoughts and acts of Virtue, Truth, Freedom and Justice-to-all, — will expedite in the Race, the Evolution of that form of Spirit, ‘which is as the form of the Son of God: who walks through the midst of the Fire unhurt’! The philosophy of the story further attempts to show, that Introduction viii this will transpire not by the suspension of the Law of Fire: but — because of the administration of that Law by a cool Intellection which will not, by excess of Airless-Heat, smother the Fire to a darkling smudge: but which (as Aristotle sug- gests) will bring ^brains, the wettest and coolest part of being,' to reign conjointly with the inspiration and respiration of Su- pernal Airs ; so as to cool and calm the Fires of Life, in a way to keep steady the flame on the Hearth-stone where a self- poised manhood is homed and where children are born, who thus shall be as scientiflcally-protected from falling under the mental-malevolence of Mysticism, as they are, from falling into the degradation of Materialism. Eveleen Laura Mason. Mid-Winter, Nineteen Hundred and Three. CHAPTER HEADINGS. PAGE Chapter I. Flotsam and Jetsam 1 Chapter II. ** For there are set thrones of Judgment*^ 29 Chapter III. Jetsam 43 Chapter IV. ^‘Without Liberty there are few virtues. Despotism breeds pusilla- nimity and deepens the abyss of vice.’' American Declaration of Independence y first uttered in 1766 in the Province of Louisi- ana 54 Chapter V. Wisdom is Liberty and Liberty is Wisdom. Each with the other must abide, For to be truly free, as God would have you be, Wisdom and Will must co-incide 65 Chapter VI. Unordinated values, ordinated according to Divine ordination ... 78 Chapter VII. The ordinating of some kinds of value 112 Chapter VUI. The Inordinates 140 X Chapter Headings PAGE Chapier IX ''For this cause the Lord sent his Angel who is over the beast, Hegrin: and stopped his mouth that he should not devour thee ’^ — Hennas 159 Chapter X. The rationalization and the divinitization of latent faculties . . . 169 Chapter XI. How can I steadily keep my body, soul spirit and the results of external activities up to the level of the three-fold-power whose impulsions from the fixed center within, work out the unification of circumferences? 185 Chapter XII. "He that chiefly owes himself to himself is the substantial man” — Sir Thomas Browne 202 Chapter XIII. "A great scholar in the highest sense is, not one who simply depends on an infinite memory but also on infinite and electric-power of combination, bringing together from the Four Winds, like the Angel of The Resurrection, what else were dust from dead- men^s bones, into the unity of Breathing-Life ” — De Quincey . 211 Chapter XIV. "Now is the winter of our discontent overpast” 233 Chapter XV. "The Medial Spirit: Virgo. Simple and mixed, both form and substance, forth to perfect Being started like three darts shot from a bow three-corded. Thus even at the moment of its issuing did Eternal Sovran beam entire His three-fold operation at one act produced coeval. Yet in order each created, his due station knew. Those the highest, pure In- Chapter Headings XI telligence were made. Mere Power, the lowest. In the midst, the Medial-Spirit, bound in strict league. Intelligence and Power, form and substance in unsevered-bond’^ Chapter XVI. *^Oh, righteous gods: how few of all the great are just to Heaven, and to their promise true ” — Odyssey Chapter XVII. Demand that spiritual liberation, which neither cultivating selfish- ness nor stifling it, lays hold on that Omnipotent Power, which enables justice and generosity” Chapter XVIII. There is a triuall kinde of seeming good religion! Yet I find but one to be embraced, which must be drawn from Papist, Protestant or Puritana’ — Time's Whistler y E. E. T. S., p. 1. ‘By thy triple-shape as thou art seen Tn heaven, earth, hell: and everywhere a Queen, ‘Grant this my first desire^ Chapter XIX. Known as souls enabled to rebuild the body they inhabit, to an extent limited only by Rectitude to personal ideal of The Possible PAGE 253 274 277 301 327 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, PAGE " American Waterlily Foreword The geometrically imaged garden plot 97 Hebraic sketch of the story of character-building 160 Down among the frogs, the lilypads and tadpoles 176 The bull-frog on the lilypad with the lotus-bud at his heart .... 177 The re-incarnated monkey-men come back to let their eyes see, their ears hear and their mouths speak no evil 194 Austrian doubled-headed Eagle with the dancing lion and fluttering birds at its heart 222 Russian double-headed Eagle with the king of himself seated on white horse with the boar under its hoofs 240 Saxon White Horse 251 The winged Mercury receiving message from the Medial Spirit Virgo, 260 Mercury hieing away, challenging the gods to hear and obey . . . 261 The Egyptian Ankh, symbolizing the anchor of the soul .... 327 '.'I WHO BUILDS? CHAPTER I. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.* /^N Frantze at this crisis, life came in like a flood. And as flotsam, careening in the tide, smites the sight of one standing on a rock in the midst of wreckage, so he was smitten by the sight of himself, the oldest of the children: and of the roof for the stability of which he had been held accountable: and of the whirl of complications which had climaxed with the coming of the letter announcing Landseer’s death on his arrival in England; and of Mrs. Landseer’s closed door, which had excluded the children, as the house door held in Tama’s hand and her words: ^^Madame’s thanks, nothing is required,” had excluded the assistance proffered by visitors. He stood as if stunned by concussionary detonations sent forth from the conflicts of the unburiable-past; yet, a’strain and alert to grasp the relation of that past to the portentous announcement of the black-bordered letter; the virulence of which lay in the mystery it concealed, which was more por- tentous still. The letter was dated September 3rd, 1890. A date near that which had been forecast as the time when the sun passing into new constellations, would be followed by events which would stagger the earth. ‘ ♦Flotsam is ^oods which lie floating on the surface of the sea when a ship is wrecked, in distmction from Jetsam, which is goods thrown into the sea when a ship is in danger of wreckage, for the purpose of lightening her, and which re- mams at sea without coming to land.’ 2 Who Builds ? The set time had come. But where now was he who had sought to concentrate public attention on portions of He- brew history, Hhe complications of which,’ Mrs. Landseer had said, ‘could be brutally reenacted if manceuverers de- voted themselves to energizing murderous passions which, after decades of world-wide rapine and warfare, could then but be dealt with through the individual development of fealty to the unwritten law of Jurisprudence. Jurisprudence, which intuitively treats compulsory-law in the light of under- lying principles and characteristic tendencies.’ “For,” she had said, “jurisprudential-methods deal with the inherent dynamic-impetus which controls beings who are fully individualized.” Frantze remembered how Landseer was angered by this statement, which he called ‘a mere bewildering and berid- dleing of the simple fact that the thirty-years war, then on, would culminate in such a world-wide victory as would en- throne, world-wide, the Anglo-Saxon race:: who then would command peace: and next would be ready to teach the phi- losophy of jurisprudence (as a New Education), the possession of which is to become omen and cognomen of Rulers.’ That had quite sounded like a noble outlook. Yet Frantze had wondered why Landseer and his theorists did not, rather hold to the business of cultivating world-wide this innate pos- session instead of planning to kill world-wide its innate pos- sessors. And now, a’halt before what seemed to him to be an arrest in the whole proceeding, he remembered the care with which Mrs. Landseer had emphasized the re-statement that this jurisprudential power and method of dealing with self and others is at-one with the latent (even when unrecognized and unutilized) dynamic impulse that controls Individuals, popularly and rightly called Conscience. Remembering, that Landseer received her repeated impressment of her idea as if a personal reflection on his ability were conveyed to him by the remark. The statement had been, at least impressive enough to have sent the boy (with their fashion of following up a matter under discussion) to hunt up the word ‘individual’: so struck was he with Lamed’s evident certainty that not to be Who Builds f 3 individual or individualized included some lack, which amounting to little less than a personal-deformity was a to-he-rectified personal calamity. He of course, discovered the word came from individu-us: and meant, ‘not to be di- vided.’ And now as he thought of it. Individuality appealed to him as including a Self- Wholeness, the overwhelming sense of the Majesty of which, so enlivened his soul, that it gave him to taste and feel the dynamic-impetus of that torrent of Life, which Lamed had told him rendered a true Individual, at-one-with Omnipotent, Omniscient Omnipresence: filling him then, with the certainty that all the life that ever had been anywhere, was then there present. Therefore, present then and there was the life which was once embodied in form and features of him who had been known as Archibald Landseer. With an old self-poise, which like jetsam was heaved up with the treasures of the moral-development of his unburiable- past, this child of sanctity, catching step, as with a longer stride and tightening grasp as on a larger hand, strode out, as if walking and talking again with him who, in recent un- balanced days, had cavilled at and then, had reclutched Mrs. Landseer’s sight of the doings of that Omniscience, which, she claimed, filters down for the reception of those who are self-whole enough to receive, hold and not waste it, because of having been taught, when energized by it, to utilize it in a better way than in that sickly form of Wertherism ‘with its disabling moral lassitude, the only cure for which’ (so Tennyson is reported to have said) ‘is War.’ A proposed war- cure for immorality, which Landseer now seemed to be de- claring, achieved nothing but the dislodgement of millions from the body (as he had been dislodged), leaving these dis- lodged souls to await (as he was awaiting) the retaking up of their unfinished work, when and where in the course of time they best could find chance for re-embodiment : rending Frantze’s nerves with the fury of the poor man’s cry to know WHY he had been dislodged and why he had so foolhardily planned to have, decade on decade, hosts of other men thus dislodged by that warfare which, Landseer now seemed to be asserting, was in line with the lawless law of a not juris- prudential management: straining Frantze’s inmost fibres 4 Who Builds ? with cries against the blindness of not having lived on patiently while wisely aiding in the harmonizing of the lower forms of mere force by the power of that Intelligence, which makes for peace and purity. Then, as if deluged again in his old dream of attaining a world-wide public recognition and in his scorn of merely ‘perfecting duty on the spot one stands on,^ that tormented soul precipitated on Frantze, rehearsals of the two opposed ways in which a handful of humanity might be set up as world- wide leaders. As if with closed doors, Landseer as of old, seemed to be now drowning the boy^s being in a smudge of pledged secrecy: flatteringly calling him, ‘ friend,' ‘counsellor' and ‘coadjutor,' throwing him into a psychic ferment: out of which death- dealing-daze he tore with the cry: “Cease Landseer. Get off the past! Live in the present. Leave me Now!" Re- garnering thus into himself the ‘life he had to live^: and rid- ding himself from subjection to the madness of the maddened. Into this shattered silence soft shod Tama walked with uplifted hand whispering, “You'se right. Honey! Stand firm!" Then, “She lies like one dead! No word! No tear! Jus' t'inking: t'inking! An' what ole Tama's gwoin' ter do wif yer all, de Lawd only knows." “But," said Frantze (gazing out over the intervale to the mountains while mastering the weird experiences through which he had passed, and gripping a new hold on the tangible existence which Tama's coming seemed, for him, to have re-substantiated) “He does know!" “Good Lawd! So He do!" said Tama. “But I had 'most los' my hold on de secret of de Lawd 'bout dis whole t'ing. Who Builds ? 5 What madame says, seems re^son^ble. But what she don^t say, seems mebbe, re^son^bler. An^ dat whole side am dar! An' what I want is ter git at it. Madame doesn't like dat letter 'bout — " She caught her breath, looking to see if the younger children were near. Then pulling Frantze out onto the little back porch, and shutting and holding the door, she added in a whisper,. 'bout not habbin' — habbin' — what's left of him brought home hyah-h! I t'ink she's a'feared dos secret sciety men knows suffin. An' she's afeared" — ‘^Sho! Sho!" said Frantze, in Tama's lingo, ‘^We won't none ob us get at de secret ob the Lawd in that way. ^De secret ob de Lord is with them that fear Him.' That's about the last thing Landseer said to me when he was talking about the ‘Great Secret,' and holding me responsible for everything, in case he never came back," added Frantze, in a smothered tone. For the stately Tama had gathered his slight figure into her arms: and sitting on the settle with him rocked to and fro, pitifully conscious of his grand-poising of himself, just returned as she believed him to be from the border-land, a little more to the further side of which, she knew, was the limit-line. And saying as she cried and crooned over him : '^Dat's so I'se jes' gwoin' on ter fear der wrong pusson. I oughten't! 'Cos I know well 'nuff dat 'merican scriptur: ‘I will not fear what man can do to me.' 'Cos Massa Landseer tole it ter me 'stead of Koran: when he said so po'ful-like, ^it's no way ter go tossing on der sea of circumstances when dey go, confus- in' round. 'Cause man mus' not let de changing circumstance ob dis yer passin' era shove him outen his proper 'lations ter his principles, but mus' either crowd back dose circum- stances or utilize dem. ' " Yes," said Frantze. All the time lately, he talked about that, when we walked together so fast. And I promised I would do one or the other! And all these two days I've been thinking about it. Landseer said I must remember it; because I was a natural coward; and might have no help in making my way. Suddenly he shortened his long stride, opening his closed hand as if letting go of a bigger one exclaiming, “Landseer is not dead!” A sharply expelled breath sounded from the window above the little porch, and the sight of a vanishing face met Tama’s eyes. A look of understanding passed between her and Frantze, as he added, in tones which he meant should reach the chamber — “Tama, I wonder whether, perhaps, Landseer himself felt so permanent that, as he could not utilize circumstances, perhaps he ignored them, and instead decided to assume the circumstances which would stand round him if he — if he — got out of his body you know!” “O my great Lord!” cried Tama, upflinging herself, hands foremost toward the vaulted blue. “O my great Lord! What is de fac’ ob dis yer case? What did dat man go doin’ wif hisself dat day he los’ his courage, ’cause de battle ob dis Who Builds ? 7 life goes so hard? 0 Lord remember not Against him any fool-way ob doin\ ^Cause you yourself can jes^ ignore dat circumstance, an^ Tama an^ dis blessed chile will come right inter line, an^ assume whateber circumstance, dat one-minit fool-act, plunged us all inter, dat day when he los^ courage. Here, here Lord; I is your servant. Put it on ole Tama. I bow! I bow!^’ And, with the incalculable agility of the desert people, she flung herself down again, with swift genuflexions, abandoning herself to worshipful obedience. And the torrent which swept through her, carried Frantze and all who heard along as in the rhythmic Arabic of the Koran she adjured him — Landseer, Landseer! Thou knowest it is he who created you of clay and then decreed the term of your lives. And the preflxed term is written; yet you doubt thereof! He is God of heaven and earth. He knoweth what you have kept secret, and what you publish, and knoweth what you deserve. There came not unto you any sign of the signs of the Lord, but you have retired from the same. You have gain-said the truth after it has come to you. But a message shall come unto you concerning that which you have mocked at. You shall be convinced of the truth before which you faltered, when you shall see the punishment which you shall suffer for faltering, both in this world and in the next : — when you shall see the glorious success of that which you have aban- doned. For your generation shall be established on the earth in a manner wherein we have not established youJ^ This, in the Arabic of the Koran. Then in her broken English she pleaded — Lord of Heaven make him hear, and hearing make him understand that ancient word! And now, if there is a way to do it Lord, put Thy Power on this household : that we, every one may royally assume the circumstances which Land- seer has thrust upon us by cowardly rushing uncalled into the unseen realm.’! The silence and all that was in it held back breath while, with an insurgence indescribable she called three times on the name of Landseer; assuring him again that the Lord knew what he deserved for retiring from life’s battles ^ with no sign of the signs of the Lord, and for gainsaying the truth after 8 Who Builds ? it had come to him, and for doubting and faltering in the way/ And that, though he had helpers still, not one of them should be his servant; for he, not being his own master, hence- forth should master none. But waiting aside, he should be but a spectator of the work of those who now would bring jubilee to earth. Nor should he, by psychic intrusion, burden others with his Will and wishes, in the attempt to make them do for him what he had lacked courage to stay on the battle-field of life and do for himself. Cease Tama!'^ It came like a command from the chair at the open window above the little balcony. But it only doubled Tama’s sense of the dangers which a suicidal poltroon brings on family and community: causing her, with redoubled zeal to send ‘the word’ to the disembodied soul whom she felt, earth- bound, was shivering near, instead of following up the search into other-world-knowledge which he had forced an entrance there, in order to make. And like one who had the care of a derelect, who had plunged into mysteries mid which he could not now get his bearings, sonorously bell-like, on tolled her voice : — “Landseer, you’se no more dead dan I is! So get you hoi ob de fac’l An’ clear away dese falsehoods ’bout Woman- nature dat poisons woman’s heart ’gainst her crucifiers an’ man’s heart ’gainst her! Tell de trufe dat you know is at de foundation ob universal harmony; as yer said yerself ter Tama once; supposin’ she wouldn’t know de rest ob it. Landseer, lest yer want ter be dragged down ter hell, — quit lies!” she shouted, falling prone to the floor, dead spent by the expul- sion of soul-force which her spirit’s reach-out toward him had caused her. At this original form of service to the dead, Geraldine and Ishtar, unseen, were present: listening in a sturdy, nature- faith that Landseer was as alive as ever though invisible. And Geraldine, whose affection for Mrs. Landseer was little realized by that brain-racked woman, felt a queer satisfac- tion in the fact, that the man, whose short-stays-at-home, “made trouble in the family,” had been given to know that although he was now discounted by death, as a family-factor, he yet was expected to make things right for the mother. Who Builds ? 9 Meanwhile, her keen soul was quickened by that last sul- phurous-ejaculation. About eight years before the opening of this story Frantze a waif on the world, had been brought to this family with a past, into which Landseer had gone a’prodding as he had tried to awaken the child^s memory of what had occurred before he had fallen into the fever that, on his coming among them, had still held him in its shattering embrace. There was much at stake concerning past affairs, the com- plications of which were intricate and almost unravelable. But later, the child’s antagonism against Landseer’s un- nerved impatience, had aroused in him a critical dissection of Landseer’s contradictory statements: as, for instance, when, irritated at his inability to fashion his life according to his schemes, he once had said, Man had a right to get out of his body, when he had had enough of it” — while yet at another time he had said “As a man by suicide, got out of nothing hut his body he by no means got rid of himself; and therefore, accomplished but little by the act. For on disembodiment, he had to take himself with him, the same as a traveller on disembarkment, finds he has taken with him what he is; and, therefore, on landing, meets with whatever his presence invites and incurs!” Therefore, though for the first two days of facing the news contained in the black-bordered letter, Frantze had tended to fancy that there was a sort of heroism in getting out of a body which is a bore to dress, feed and house: yet, ever, there had come to him the assurance that a self-forced-de- parture from the body was not consistent with Landseer’s general idea of a never-say-die-courage. The day after Tama had administered her adjurations, Frantze with drooping head, hardly able to support the insight and outlook which animated his brain cells, sat in- dolently pulling the cat’s ears through his fingers, while thinking of the scene that had preceded and precipitated Landseer’s departure for England. For then, in Frantze’s hearing he had said, as if covering a retreat : — “Amy, I am driven about by contending circumstances. You cannot imagine what I endure. Amy, even now, if you 10 Who Builds ? will sell this place I will wait till the business is transacted, and then we will go back to England and I will follow up the old Law-suit and place you as a conservator of a social order you love/' In surprise hardly controlled, she had answered ^'Who claims that I love any social order ever yet practicalized in all this disordered world? You know we came here to help practicalize this country's ideals. Archibald, what has come over you? Sell this house and travel? What, with babes who need home, shoes and food?" And with a malediction against ^the grind of keeping the pot boiling, which makes a slave of a married man and life a beastly treadmill not fit for a horse' ashamed of himself and of the social muddle which loads down existence with all round causes for discontent; he ejaculated: ^^You talk too much! you're getting old!" And facing all that this really meant of his untellable weari- ness of them all and of existence, she said mildly, ^^Old enough to kill, do you think? They ask that about calves!" And he, to turn a joke on the horror of the question said, ^‘You were a calf to marry me!" Then, with trembling hands covering his eyes he ejaculated, ^^It is a confusing crisis ! " And she, with that slow seriousness of well-grounded-con- viction which is like sand in the eyes of one temperamented like Landseer, said, ^^It need not confuse us if we stick to the simple, rectifying Principle of Liberty to each and special privilege to none on which this country is foundationed ! So far, you have done good work for the people: and, except for your excessive legal and travelling expenditures (things which you had decided to drop) all might go well. Then why not you be the man to state what all wise men know but secrete: that man^s need for peace-filled-energy can be met in a way harmless to woman and her children, if but men will leave woman to re-adjust social conditions as far as her gainment and retainment of her self-possession and home-proprietorship, will, unintrusively do it.’^ The lad had often heard them discuss the simple, scientific facts relative to the orderly evolution of what she called ‘ race-functional-possibilities^ : which Mrs. Landseer consid- ered were co-natural to the well-born and well-bred who chose to utilize LIFE spiritizingly instead of dis (or ab-) using it insanely. Nevertheless, her words were met with a look which Archibald sent into her eyes: the sharpness of which struck (not into her soul but) on the Shield-of her Faith that he was not looking at her: and not even at Womanhood, per sc, but at a bringer to him of burdens: which, when he had married he had not reckoned on: and his relations to which he did not now half understand: and to the carrying of which he had no intention of settling his shoulders. These burdens, Frantze knew, were the children which, one after another, had appeared: ruining (as Landseer claimed) Mrs. LandseeFs health and beauty: spoiling his plans and making him of but secondary importance: strain- ing their modest competence into poverty: and turning his inspiriting wife into a sick-looking drudge, harder to endure than all the rest. At the time, Frantze had not thought Landseer meant un- kindness. He was but stating unpleasant facts, something of the brunt of which (coming on Frantze in those eight years) had not left him ignorant of the Cause, back of them. But he did not know (for he had seen little home-life outside of this house) that (as Lamed once had said) ^square shoul- dered men asked nothing better, than that the Mother of their children should give herself to the business of perfectly edu- cating the children whom she brings into existence.’ He noticed how critically Lamed had listened and waited at 12 Who Builds ? that crisis: dispassionately looking at the Father of her chil- dren as if glad that his swift fire was transfused through their being: but conscious that, its fury would likely make them soon tend to become as insanely tired of everything they had ever seen, heard or thought of, as Landseer, suddenly and frequently became, when he had his frenzies, to ^get away, anywhere, only to be gone\f These things Frantze had heard talked over often enough to understand the full meaning of that moment: and to see how, though her limbs suddenly failed her under Landseer^s maddened look of boredom, Mrs. Landseer yet, with the composure of self-control had sunken safely into a chair, instead of fainting on the floor. The tragedy of that moment never to him lost its signifi- cance. He realized (though he could not have voiced it) that Lamed^s clarity of thought which to her was a high corrective of irritation against Landseer^s lack of spiritual- illumination — simply irritated him; keeping him chronically angry at her acceptance of the fact that the self-evolution which he was running up and down the Earth to accomplish, would more finely have come to him if he could have staid at home in that ^quietness and peace in which there is strength.^ For Landseer it was enough now, that she was to know he stood there ready to start that minute, or to postpone it a week if she would sell the place for what she could get, and pull up and go with him. All he wanted, was a simple yes or no. But at her first word his next came hurtling forth as from a person harassed within an inch of life by The driving forces with which a Satan of Authority makes a pandemonium of a household that keeps that Satan in bondage.^ This, Mrs. Landseer comprehended and was not surprised. For she had long known that her relentless study of ^Life^s great concern’ (immortally apprehended from a scientific stand- point) rendered her far less pleasant to him than any amount of daily bickerings and quarrels made up with final conces- sions and emotional-pacifications, day after day, would have done. She knew she was not the kind of wife that would have been pleasantest, but also she knew, there were other questions to be considered. The point now was, she saw her efforts at mutuality were distinctly repugnant to him. He Who Builds ? 13 wanted her to know it. She did know it. And knowing it beyond a peradventure, she said, ^^Here let the matter rest. But before we part I will tell you, nothing less deserves to be undermined than does the ^Temple’ which Masons of old planned to build.'’ All the more reason I should fight for it," he said. ^^Not by fighting but by working out each step of advance- ment, Masons upclimb!" she replied: awakening his response, that, for him freedom to breathe outside of conventionalities was a necessity. Then to squarely precipitate the crisis which they both knew had arrived, she said, ^^Do you find it hard Ho breathe' here?" — to which, he, seeing his way out of in- furiatingly burdensome-circumstances, fetching his eyes close to hers, sped into her face the ejaculation, ^^Yes." Which she met with a friendly grip of the hand, as true and kindly as her question and voice had been: — while she said: honestly believe it, Landseer. And I give you liberty to breathe elsewhere, (where you will) with no thought of me or my children." And he, chagrined at the tranquillity of this unheard of acquiescence, ejaculated ^^My Lord, Amy! Are you tired of ME?" fetching out her simple words, ^^As tired, Archi- bald, as you, for years have been of your burden!" And when he, panting between fury, amazement and the com- fort of relief at getting off so easily, had said — ^She could never understand him'; she had answered, “Better than that, Archibald: I comprehend you. And I comprehend my past- relations and my future 'possible- form of service to you. I still can be more serviceable than ever. But I can never be lovable, ^pleasant' or satisfactory! Because you want some- thing I have not to give; and which Home cannot supply. 