When the house began to `go up,' Edwin lived in an ecstasy of
contemplation. I say with deliberateness an `ecstasy.' He had seen
houses go up before; he knew that houses were constructed brick by
brick, beam by beam, lath by lath, tile by tile; he knew that they did
not build themselves. And yet, in the vagueness of his mind, he had
never imaginatively realised that a house was made with hands, and hands
that could err. With its exact perpendiculars and horizontals, its
geometric regularities, and its Chinese preciseness of fitting, a house
had always seemed to him--again in the vagueness of his mind--as
something superhuman. The commonest cornice, the most ordinary pillar
of a staircase-balustrade--could that have been accomplished in its
awful perfection of line and contour by a human being? How easy to
believe that it was `not made with hands'!
But now he saw. He had to see. He saw a hole in the ground, with water
at the bottom, and the next moment that hole was a cellar; not an
amateur cellar, a hole that would do at a pinch for a cellar, but a
professional cellar. He appreciated the brains necessary to put a brick
on another brick, with just the right quantity of mortar in between. He
thought the house would never get itself done--one brick at a time--and
each brick cost a farthing--slow, careful; yes, and even finicking. But
soon the bricklayers had to stand on plank-platforms in order to reach
the raw top of the wall that was ever rising above them. The
measurements, the rulings, the plumbings, the checkings! He was humbled
and he was enlightened. He understood that a miracle is only the result
of miraculous patience, miraculous nicety, miraculous honesty,
miraculous perseverance. He understood that there was no golden and
magic secret of building. It was just putting one brick on another and
against another--but to a hair's breadth. It was just like anything
else. For instance, printing! He saw even printing in a new light.
And when the first beams were bridged across two walls...
The funny thing was that the men's fingers were thicky and clumsy.
Never could such fingers pick up a pin! And still they would manoeuvre
a hundredweight of timber to a pin's point.
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