In Egypt, travelers tell us about the destruction of palaces by vandals and Huns. The greatest architects and artists the world has ever known toiled upon the palace, and made it as perfect as a red rose; then came along these vandals—they ripped out carvings of angels and seraphs, that held a beauty that would pierce an artist’s heart, and with these carvings boiled their kettles. They pulled down the statues of Phidias and burned them into lime. They took the very stones of a palace and built them into hundreds of mean and squalid hovels. Soon where had been a structure for the gods, there stood hovels unfit for beasts.
In the same way many men treat the precious things of life and religion.
(3379)
VANITY
The fate of the soap-bubble is a lesson put into rime by Katherine Pyle:
“I am little,” the soap-bubble said, “just now;
Oh, yes, I am small, I know”;
(This is what it said to the penny pipe);
“But watch and see me grow.
“Now, look! and reflected in me you’ll see