But As I Sat On That Main
Bridge I Counted Seven Others; Indeed There Must Have Been A Worship
Of A Bridge-God Some Time Or Other To Account For Such A Necklace Of
Bridges In Such A Neglected Borough.
You may say (I am off hard on the road to Borgo, drooping with the
heat, but still going strongly), you may say that is explicable
enough.
First a thing is useful, you say, then it has to become
routine; then the habit, being a habit, gets a sacred idea attached to
it. So with bridges: _e.g._ Pontifex; Dervorguilla, our Ballici saint
that built a bridge; the devil that will hinder the building of
bridges; _cf. _the Porphyry Bridge in the Malay cosmogony;
Amershickel, Brueckengebildung im kult-Historischer. Passenmayer;
Durat, _Le pont antique, etude sur les origines Toscanes;_ Mr Dacre's
_The Command of Bridges in Warfare; Bridges and Empire,_ by Captain
Hole, U.S.A. You may say all this; I shall not reply. If the heat has
hindered me from saying a word of the fine open valley on the left, of
the little railway and of the last of the hills, do you suppose it
will permit me to discuss the sanctity of bridges? If it did, I think
there is a little question on 'why should habit turn sacred?' which
would somewhat confound and pose you, and pose also, for that matter,
every pedant that ever went blind and crook-backed over books, or took
ivory for horn.
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