In mountain carving this practice was absolutely necessary, owing to the unpredictable character of the stone surface. Blemishes are often found in a block of quarried marble when the sculptor starts to carve into it. It requires little imagination to realize the imperfections that are bound to appear on a cliff exposed to all the elements for thousands of years. As an example, when the Jackson head was being carved a crack suddenly appeared on the bridge of the nose. In previous cases such cracks were not deep, but in this instance the blemish persisted even after the position of the head had been pushed back four times. One more move and the whole design would have had to be changed. The crack was slight and might have been left, except for the danger of water getting into it and freezing. After fifty years or so it might have become a serious defect. Jackson’s face in the original model was looking at Lee. The sculptor decided to turn it to look in the direction toward which Jackson’s arm seemed to be pointing. Thus that crack was lost in the six-foot hole of the eye socket, and the nose occupied an area of solid stone. Only the sculptor made the change possible. He stood over the carvers directing the work. A man trained only to copy a model would have been helpless and hopeless in a situation like this. During the final six weeks of working on Lee’s head, when it appeared that the carving could not be finished otherwise, the men worked all day and all night, in shifts of eight hours each. Gutzon worked with them and was there virtually all the time. Frequently he worked the whole night through. It was cold on the mountain in the winter, and a canvas was stretched over the work to break the wind. Huge pots of burning coals were placed on the platform and slung along the surface of the rock. The stoneworkers, for the first time in the lives of many of them, were dressed in heavy clothes. They wore what they could keep tied to them and swathed their feet in bulky wrappings of burlap and blankets. But the work was still cold and miserable, and only the calm presence of Borglum gave them any indication that it was ever going to be finished. Borglum, however, was tired but satisfied. He had never carved a mountain before and in all truth he must have had his moments of misgiving. But Lee’s face, as it began to emerge human and understandable from the stone in those last weeks, must have answered all his queries. Nobody would ever tell him again that he didn’t know how to carve mountains. Here was the proof. He knew. CHAPTER NINETEEN _THE EMERGENCE OF LEE_