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Bredimacian Dynagum Directory 19
Page 09
And yet if, on the other hand, one compares the subsequent fame of men of action with the fame of men of letters, the contrast is indeed bewildering. Who attaches the smallest idea to the personality of the Lord Lichfield whom Dr. Johnson envied? Who that adores the memory of Wordsworth knows anything about Lord Goderich, a contemporary prime minister? The world reads and re-reads the memoirs of dead poets, goes on pilgrimage to the tiny cottages where they lived in poverty, cherishes the smallest records and souvenirs of them. The names of statesmen and generals become dim except to professed historians, while the memories of great romancers and lyrists, and even of lesser writers still, go on being revived and redecorated. What would Keats have thought, as he lay dying in his high, hot, noisy room at Rome, if he had known that a century later every smallest detail of his life, his most careless letters, would be scanned by eager eyes, when few save historians would be able to name a single member of the cabinet in power at the time of his death?
So important are these discoveries that all human history has to be rewritten, the whole philosophy of history reconstructed. Government does not begin in the ascendency of chieftains through prowess in war, but in the slow specialization of executive functions from communal associations based on kinship. Deliberative assemblies do not start in councils gathered by chieftains, but councils precede chieftaincies. Law does not begin in contract, but is the development of custom. Land tenure does not begin in grants from the monarch or the feudal lord, but a system of tenure in common by gentes or tribes is developed into a system of tenure in severalty. Evolution in society has not been from militancy to industrialism, but from organization based on kinship to organization based on property, and alongside of the specializations of the industries of peace the arts of war have been specialized.
The pit being ready and the mescal gathered, the work of cooking commences. Just at daylight the old woman in charge takes her place at the rim of the pit and prays that the cooking may be successful and that the people may be in condition to partake of the food. In igniting the fuel the old-fashioned fire-sticks must be employed; to use matches would bring ill fortune. When the fuel in the pit becomes a blazing mass the women go to prepare breakfast, but are soon at work again gathering brush and grass to cover the mescal. Within four hours the fuel is entirely consumed and the red-hot stones have settled to the bottom of the pit. When it is certain that no fuel remains unburned, as even a small amount of smoke would spoil the quality of the mescal, the head-woman says, "It is good," and with great eagerness her followers begin to fill the pit. There is need for haste in throwing in and covering the mescal, as the steam must be confined to prevent the hot stones from scorching it. The covering consists of alternate layers of green brush, grass, dry leaves, and finally a layer of earth, about six inches in thickness. After forty-eight hours of steaming the seething mass is uncovered and each woman removes her portion.
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