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Show i The Things That Last I In the town of Tenayuca, half a dozen miles outside of 1 i jtico. City, archaeologists are restoring a great Aztec, 3 , pie, one of the finest now in existence. , tls four walls are, panelled, with bas-relief serpents chisel chis-el in stone. A great, steep stairway leads up the west side the tall pyramid; at the top is an open. space where once . ! stone altar and sanctuary, stood.. ; Much of the structure is missing. For centuries Indians 1 white men have carried, away stones for building mate- !s. The towering mass of earth' and rock that: remains ; 3 not, for a long time, even known to be an artificial affair; ; iple who lived near it supposed it was just a rather sym-f sym-f rical hill. It is interesting to. ponder on the-fate, that .overtakes . buildings. '. .. , : live centuries ago this building at Tenayuca represented utmost in theological knowledge and architectural skill at could be found in the new world; It was one of the jat achievements of a race; it symbolized the highest-point ached by the minds of America's wisest men in their up- !i 'rd gropings for truth and beauty. , I Undoubtedly, the men who built it and served; in its j ;ual looked on it as permanent. Their nation ruled' all of j e world they knew about; no -vision -of- the future that ! ey might have had could have foretold the complete ex-j ex-j iction of their civilization. . Yet today their imposing Imple, where they groped tor an understanding or the m-I m-I nite, is a moss-grown ruin, .visited only by professors with itobooks. This sort of moralizing is old, stuff, perhaps. Yet it is actly the sort of thing that we who have such unlimited i lith in the things we make, with, our hands, ought to indulge i a little more. , ... . . .... Some day, in all probability, the United States of Am-rica Am-rica will go the way of the empire of Montezuma( and our nest buildings will be rubbish heaps for antiquarians from -China, shall we say? Wars; revolutions economic shifts nd natural catastrophes will destroy all that we have built ; nd what will be left? What have we, today; that, would i1 e thought worth saving by an, alien race, of conquerors? ! Not much, perhaps. Intangible things, at best; a glimpse t: , f. beauty, here and there, a vision of sanity amid the chaos of !! ; if e, a gleam of eternal truth found in the turmoil of things I . ' ftthing more. Steel and stone rust and crumble. If, they I ire the only materials in which, we can build : there won't e much left of our handiwork.. Until we learn how to pro- ; i luce something besides skyscrapers, and automobiles: and I jteel plate, we needn't feel, that we're' going-to. bequeath U ':iuch a great deal to posterity. |