"Read me a sermon in stone," he said, simply;
and I stayed my hand to read.
He listened with courteous intelligence.
"You hold a roadmender has a vocation?" he asked.
"As the monk or the artist, for, like both, he is universal. The
world is his home; he serves all men alike, ay, and for him the
beasts have equal honour with the men. His soul is 'bound up in
the bundle of life' with all other souls, he sees his father, his
mother, his brethren in the children of the road. For him there is
nothing unclean, nothing common; the very stones cry out that they
serve."
Parson nodded his head.
"It is all true," he said; "beautifully true. But need such a view
of life necessitate the work of roadmending? Surely all men should
be roadmenders."
O wise parson, so to read the lesson of the road!
"It is true," I answered; "but some of us find our salvation in the
actual work, and earn our bread better in this than in any other
way. No man is dependent on our earning, all men on our work. We
are 'rich beyond the dreams of avarice' because we have all that we
need, and yet we taste the life and poverty of the very poor. We
are, if you will, uncloistered monks, preaching friars who speak
not with the tongue, disciples who hear the wise words of a silent
master."
"Robert Louis Stevenson was a roadmender," said the wise parson.
"Ay, and with more than his pen," I answered. "I wonder was he
ever so truly great, so entirely the man we know and love, as when
he inspired the chiefs to make a highway in the wilderness.
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