(NOVEMBER) It is a noble thing for men ... to make the face of a wall look infinite, and its edge against the sky like an horizon; or even if less than this be reached, it is still delightful to mark the play of passing light on its broad surface, and to see by how many artifices and gradations of tinting and shadow, time and storm will set their wild signatures upon it. --_Ruskin_: _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_. THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS One of the most interesting things in this whole wonderful story of the life history of the world is how men were first able to read it at all. For we know they didn't find it written out in plain print as we have it now. Neither was it told in any one language so that getting hold of the thread of the story they could unravel it all, as other learned men did the picture writing of the Egyptians and the wedge-shaped marks on Assyrian bricks. We know already how they learned that rivers open their own gateways through the mountains; how they know rocks are made over in the fairyland of change; how they know the ancient glaciers scattered the boulders over mountainside, valley, and field; how they know the mountains are children of the sea. All this and more we have been reading in the written language of the rocks, but there are other things in this rock script that I have kept for this last but one of our pleasant talks, so that they might serve as a kind of summary and remembrance of all that has gone before. [Illustration: A WALL THAT VULCAN BUILT I've said it several times before, but I can't help saying it here again, how much more wonderful the ways of Nature are than was ever dreamed of even in the wonder tales of the Greeks! Take this great iron wall, for example--a wall of the iron rock called "lava"--and who would suppose that it was made by natural forces? It was driven in a molten state into a crack in overlying rock. After it cooled, the rock above and on either side of it, being of softer material, was worn away. This wall is near Spanish Peaks, Colorado. It is 100 feet high and some 30 feet wide. Colorado boys, on their vacations in that region, run along the top of it for miles. ] I. The Mysteries in Marble Walls Take a piece of marble for example, such as you see along the walls of our great modern buildings. There's a story for you! Why, if half the things it tells had just happened, or even just been discovered by some enterprising reporter, we should see pages and pages about it all in every newspaper in the land. HOW MARBLE RETELLS THE WORLD HISTORY