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 complete in itself, as fitly shaped and
consolidated to defy the elements, as the towering palm or the tapering
pine! Well, we had the satisfaction for a time of claiming the tallest
structure in the world; and now that the new Tower of Babel which has
sprung up in Paris has killed that pretention, I think we shall feel and
speak more modestly about our stone hyperbole, our materialization of the
American love of the superlative. We have the higher civilization among
us, and we must try to keep down the forth-putting instincts of the
lower. We do not want to see our national monument placarded as "the
greatest show on earth,"--perhaps it is well that it is taken down from
that bad eminence.