Brothers; or, The brotherhood of man

Front matter

OR

The Brotherhood of Man

A Sun Play

ACT I. Oration of Herald or Voice

"The play 'Brothers!' is composed of days and periods of the world's history during which the brotherhood of man had its inception and early development, and when the spirit of liberty, grown to majestic proportions, finally merged with the brotherhood princijjle realizing the attainment of world freedom and international brotherhood.

"In battles between the forces of light and darkness, the evolution of the human family, the building of the dam and the great pyramid, the growth of liberty and democracy will be pictured the development of mankind through the upbuilding of the brotherhood of man.

"Music and pleasure developed from the drummer and clown-like individual of the stone age is intended to illustrate the spirits of music and pleasure, gifts to earth's people for tonics, rejuvenators and weapons against the forces of darkness.

"The forces of darkness are shown in many forms like envy, superstition, idolatry, slavery, piracy, murder and despotism. Among the milestones on the way are the Sphinx, representing the dawn of light, the building of the great pyramid representing men striving for and recording achievement, liberty — its inception and growth as represented in American history and the proclamation of our great President Woodrow Wilson putting the United States into the world war as champion of World freedom and the international brotherhood of man.

"And now we will unroll the scroll of earth's time and go back far into the centuries of the past.

"BEHOLD! ACT I.

"The first dawn of the light."

BROTHERS, of the Past.

My friend, Harold L. Winton, the noted Egyptologist, and I had been discussing his theory that there is nothing entirely new under the sun.

I asked the question, "Don't you think that the idea of an international brotherhood is new?"

"On the contrary" he replied "it is a development of probably seven thousand years. I have a remarkable document that I found with the two Egyptian mummies I have at home. I have told you how I found these mummies in my excavations at the pyramids. In the hands of the male I found a papyrus in a sealed stone tube.

"The translation of that wonderful ancient writing which was executed in the IV dynasty, about 39 00 B. C, revealed some startling things. It shows that a brotherhood was then developed and planned to extend its principles and knowledge to other countries. That reincarnation was then believed in as it is by many learned people today and that great loves of men and women were a part of the early history even as they will occasionally be found in our modern history."

"It is also curious to say the least that the names of this man and woman translated are John and Mary, only the first names are given, because these names will be found in use throughout the intervening centuries."

Several days later when I had finished examining the original papyrus and Winton's translation of it I was delighted to receive a copy of the latter and my friend's permission to publish it.

The heading of the papyrus, part of the first paragraph and the equivolent of about eight paragraphs are not decipherable with the most powerful microscope.

There is one other entire section in the account of tlie second day or the story of one day of the writer's life in that wonderful Egyptian period when the Sphinx and great Pyramid were built, which cannot be read. This is very much to be regretted because from it we could learn the construction of the powerful sun-glasses they used.

There is also considerable writing after John's story ends which was evidently done by another and it is reasonable to surmise that he was the one who embalmed, or caused John and Mary to be embalmed and sealed up the papyrus in the stone tube but unfortunately not a single word of this can be read.

Mr. Winton's translation of what he could read is as follows:

I am dying . . . record ...

(Note — Here there is about eight paragraphs that cannot be read, then follows) :

While I can still recall them clearly I want to set down those two days in our lives. The first came to me like a dream. I believe it is a day out of my life ages ago brought back to my present consciousness by the stone we found and my work on it lately an account of which I will set down later on.

Those scenes from the past begin at day-break. I saw before me a section of country. In the foreground was a small river and on the farther bank were many rocks which increased in size toward the right, the direction from which the river flowed, until they joined a mountain in the distance. In front beyond the river the ground rose in hills, the tops of which were covered with large trees. To the left stretched out like a triangle was a vast plain.

As I looked out over the plain the sun began to rise and I gazed enthralled at the most gorgeous sunrise I ever saw. Then as I looked about again I saw that all the country seemed strange, new and wild, and several miles away I saw a large body of savages or wild men. I concentrated my gaze upon them to study their appearance when suddenly I realized that I was among them, they were all about me and — I was one of them.

"A big lot of beaver make a big place to live," Joe was saying. He stood beside me and his talk was to me.

"Yes," I replied, and then I thought a little party of beaver would choose a smaller creek and make a little place to live, but a big lot of beaver can make a big dam like this.

The others of the tribe were looking at the dam and the beaver with a curious awe because the beaver was an animal that was not killed and eaten by us, it being regarded with a sort of superstitious reverence.

"See the fish in the creek; they all stop here; can't get over the dam," yelled one of the tribe. Joe and I with others ran down to look and there was a large number of small fish below the dam. We looked at them for awhile and this line of thought came to my mind: if a big lot of beaver can make a big dam and little fish are stopped from going up the creek, we, a big lot of men, could build a big dam across a big river over there and the big fish would be easy to get with our spears.

I told my plan to Joe and he said it was good. He called all the tribe and I told them my ideas. They all were pleased and we began our journey to the river with shouts and cries of joy.

We were a tribe of men with dark brown hair and blue eyes, tall and of slender build and not so hairy as many of the other tribes. We had a sort of Chief, an old man, very gray, who did not appear to try to exercise much authority but left us to do about as we pleased. We, however, looked to him for guidance and knowledge of our modes of life.

The Chief had a daughter named — the translated name could be called Mary^who was very beautiful and was held in a sort of idolized regard by all the tribe.

As the tribe started on its rush to the river the old Chief called me and he, Mary and I walked together.

Mary had greeted me with a smile and a deep look into my eyes that chrilled me and as we walked along I seemed to grasp the fact that I loved ner with a love above that of the love of men and women of my people. It seemed to me that she was a part of something within me.

Made bold by my thoughts and Mary's glances at me but with fear of the result I took hold of her hand and gently squeezed it and her fingers closed over mine and gave me an ausweiing squeeze. We walked thus hand in hand behind the Chief when suddenly he turned and saw us.

"How dare you!" he demanded of me. Then with a torrent of words I told him of my love for Mary and how that love seemed to be a part of me and how I would struggle to win a permanent home for her, for we were a migrating tribe in search of a land to settle in.

When I had finished the old Chief stood for a little while then turned and walked toward the tribe wlio had arrived at the river. Mary and I followed him in silence.

Before we reached the others the old Chief stopped and called Mary to him, to whom he spoke in low tones for quite a little while. Mary told him sometliing in reply and then he called me and said:

"John, I will not be with you much longer for I am getting old. Your plan to build a dam over the river is wise and you have shown bravery in cur battles. Your idea of a new greater love of man and woman is believed by Mary. She says she loves you like that, so the first new moon you shall take Mary to wife and when I am gone you shall be chief. I have spoken." He turned and strode away. We followed him and joined the others.

We sat to work at once to build a dam over the river and as there were many stones on the bank and a large number of our tribe we soon erected a rough, irregular dam high enough to raise the river above the dam a few feet.

Our scouts had previously selected this place for at least a temporary home for the tribe and we were on our way here when we had camped for the night on the banks of the creek near the beaver dam. The selection had been made chiefly on account of large caves in the limestone rock of the river banks which provided us a protection against animals and enemy tribes.

The largest cave in the rocks was above where we had built the dam and the bank of tlie river rose to a considerable height with a sheer wall except a narrow ledge which led down to tlie cave.

When the dam was completed some of us got spears and soon proved that the plan of a dam was a good one and a plentiful supply of fish was assured.

Starting a fire with flint stones we prepared a feast of fish.

The chief told the tribe that Mary and I would be wed on the night of the first nev/ moon and that at his death 1 would be Chief.

The tribe cheered and chattered. Joe and several of my friends crowded around and expressed their pleasure for I seemed to be popular with the tribe.

Mary, sitting near her father, was the center of a bevy of girls and women that crowded about her.

One of the tribe had made a large drum out of the skin of a mountain goat by rubbing the hair off the skin with stones, drying it in the sun and then stretching it over a crude frame made of a sort of bamboo. He beat it with a stick that had a knot-like end.

We were proud of that drum and liked to dance to its tom-tom.

He got his drum and began drumming a song of the deeds of our tribe and the young men danced. There was no union in their dances but each danced to suit his fancy and each dance was a sort of story of the bravery and battles of the dancer and an expression of his pleasure in the new land and the coming wedding and new chief.

When this was finished one of the young men did a lot of grotesque dancing and made grimaces and facial distortions, all of which caused much laughter among the tribe.

The chief stopped our merrymaking by calling attention to a few savages in the woods in the hills beyond and Ave gathered up our tools and packs and went along the edge in the bank to the cave and went to work with a will to honeycomb the walls of the big cave with passages connecting it with the small caves. For this work we used our stone implements. The irregular walls and crevices with the soft character of the stone after the outer crust was penetrated made this not such a difficult task and we made rapid progress.

The Chief sent some of the men to spear fish for the evening meal, several hunters came in with animals they liad slain in the mountains and woods. Obtaining the Chief's permission Mary and I went to look over the country about us. Climbing back along the ledge we then walked up toward the mountain along the bank of the river passing over the cave. Near the top we stopped to examine a peculiar rock formation. It was almost circular in shape but was split in one place. Looking into the crevice which was too small to enter we saw what appeared like a small cave with a hole' in the floor which seemed to be a continuation of the split in the rock. We could see nothing in the cave but could hear a sound like water lapping against a stone.

Beyond the circular rock a high point of rock rose up almost above our big cave in the bank above the river and we climbed up this and looked over the country about us. Up to this time our conversation was very commonplace and would not be interesting to anyone. In fact I have forgotten most of it, but now as we viewed the glorious panorama of nature all around us that higher feeling that I had experienced earlier in the day seemed to take hold of my mind again and I spoke in effect about as follows:

"Mary, I am very happy and very proud and I shall try hard to lead us into a life of much joy, for truly I feel that we are mates."

"I feel like that, too," said Mary, "except that it seems to me that we will not be wed when my father says but that it will be a long, very long time afterward, and so when I should be all joy I feel at times very sad."

I tried to comfort her and erase the sad feeling but though Mary smiled and was full of joy yet there was that sad look in her eyes that would not leave.

"Let us take a swim in the river," said Mary, and she ran back the way we came to the river. I soon overtook her and we raced side by side down along the banks and down to the dam. We dove into the water and swam up the river to a point under the cave. Here we caught hold of a projecting ledge of rock and rested. I playfully tried to catch hold of Mary's hair but she dove under the water but came up in a moment and cried to me, "Come here, John, there is a cave in the rocks under the water here and I saw a ledge of dry rock above the water in it." "All right," I said, "Come on." So we dove down and sure enough there was a cavern. The opening was but a few feet below the river level. We came up to the surface of a pool in a small cave. We climbed up on the ledge or floor of the cave and looked about.

The cave was wedge shaped, the large end of the wedge toward the river with a small hole like a piece broken off the bottom of the wedge which formed the opening into the river. The long end of the wedge ran back into the hill. The floor of the cave was almost level and was covered with what seemed like fine sand. Mary and I walked to the end of the wedge. The ceiling here was only a little higher than our heads but at the extreme end there was a chimney like crevice but it was very irregular. Far above we could see the light of day. "I believe the opening in the top Is that crack in the round rock on top of the hill," said Mary.

"Well, it is a nice little cave and will make a fine hiding place if we ever need it," said I.

"Let us keep it a secret and make it our cave when we wed," pleaded

Mary. To this of course I agreed. "Now let us go back," she said. So we swam back to the dam and then sat on the bank below the dam watching our men spearing fish for the evening meal.

My attention was attracted to a peculiar shaped stone laying at the water's edge. I picked it up and found that it was roughly shaped like a lion crouching but the head was only a rough mass of rather soft stone.

Impelled by some force that 1 could not explain I got some stone implements left on the bank by one of the fishers and while Mary sat watching me, I chipped a sort oi rough human face and head out of the top and when I had finished I had a rough and very crude shape like a lion's body with a human head.

As it was late in the afternoon and near the time for the evening meal, and the fishers had already gone to the cave, Mary said, "Come, John, we had better go." So we went and I carried the stone image with me.

Arriving at the cave I set the image on a ledge of projecting rock and we joined the others at the evening meal.

The Chief asked me to sit with him and Mary and after we finished eating he said to me, "John, you are not the only one of our tribe who was hoping to win Mary. Isca was in love with her and he has left us. I saw him going into the woods yonder and 1 fear he has became a traitor and intends to get revenge by leading our enemies against us."

"I never liked him and now 1 hate him," said Mary.

"Chief, this is bad news," I said. "I will take some men and go after Isca. We promised the Magda tribe that if we lound a good land we would let them know. There are large caves above here and the Magdas are our friends and very strong, so I would like to kee]) on and bring the Magdas here. We would then be safe from attack."

"Well said, my son," said the old Chief; "take the men you want and leave tomorrow morning."

"Nay, Chief," I said, "it would be better if T left now becaiise then I may overtake Isca where he camps tonight before he can get with the enemy. Let me take Joe and three others and leave now."

"Co, my son," said the Chief.

I turned to say farewell to Mary. That sad look that had haunted her eyes and face all day was now deeply outlined there, but before I could speak she said, "Kiss me and go; it is your duty. We v/ill be mates some day and I will love you always."

I kissed her then and she tore herself out of my arms when I would have lingered and said, "See, John, the sun sets. Tt is time to go." I started away but at the entrance I turned and looked back. Mary lay upon the fioor, her head pillowed on her arm sobbing, and then a cry caused me to look toward the other end of the cave. There was all my tribe staring toward the extreme end and just then they prostrated themselves. I looked to the end of the projecting ledge and there was the stone image I had set there but now it looked like burnished gold for the last rays of the setting sun fell full upon it.

Then a long time seems to have elapsed and 1 was an old man and lived in a cave at the top of the hill in the circular shaped rock. The crevice had been enlarged to make a door. The hole in the floor was covered with a thin slate like slab of rock and on this I was working, cutting pictures telling the story of the building of the dam and the dawn of the first mental light.

I was called the hermit or tlie lone man on the hill and treated with great consideration by the Magdas whose mightv tribe inhabited our old cave and the other large caves. The dam was still there but was broken down and had never been rebuilt as the Magdas ate very little fish, being a meat loving people.

As I worked away on the picture history on the stone once again as a thousand times before I lived over the tragedy of my life. Starting from the time of leaving the cave on the trail of Isca we five quickly picked up his tracks and being swift runners we had made the place where Isca had met two of our enemies and the three had journeyed together. From here we proceeded with much caution until late at night we came to a large camp of the enemy. 1< orced to give up the idea of capturing Isca we found a safe spot, camped for the night and the next day pushed on toward the camp of the Magdas which we made in lour days. We remained with them for several days until they got ready to move and on account of being a large tribe their move was necessarily much slower than our journey to them so it was about three weeks as we now measure time before I again saw our colony at the dam.

Running ahead of the others to greet my people and embrace my dear Mary I came upon a scene of horror that for many moons threatened to cost me my reason. Most of my tribesmen lay about dead, the rest with all the women and children had been carried into captivity.

Then I did naturally something that I regretted shortly afterwards for all the rest of my life. I persuaded the Magdas to give chase to our enemies believing that they were carrying Mary away with the other women and children. For two long moons we followed them and finally succeeded in engaging them in battle and defeating them, rescued my people and then learned that Mary was not vv^ith them when they were taken prisoners; one of them had seen her leap into the river and saw no more of her.

Then the cave with the entrance under the river flashed to my mind. I started back immediately alone braving all the dangers without thought of them but running for days until I fell exhausted, resting until I recovered, then on again until I reached the site of our colony. I plunged into the river, swam up stream and when under the big cave dove down to find a huge rock blocking up the entrance. I came up to the surface and looked up to see if I had missed the location and then I saw that the projecting rock on which I had placed the idol had broken off and fallen into the river and the enormous mass blocked up the entrance of the cave.

Later from the prisoners we captured and our rescued women I learned that the enemies had broken off the projecting ledge of rock when they had scrambled up there to examine the stone image I put there. Several of them were on the ledge when one picked up the image and jumped to the cave floor below. At this moment and before the others could get out of the way the huge mass of rock had broken off and fallen into the river. Whether those on the ledge when it fell were killed or escaped no one seemed to know.

But when I came out of the river at the dam after seeing the rock over the lower cave entrance I knew nothing for many weeks. My friend Joe and the three who had gone on the journey to the Magdas with me found me on the bank of the river and nursed me back to life.

A long time afterward I made my cave in the circular rock at the top of the hill and then looking at the hole in the floor, the chimney-like crevice that Mary and I saw occurred to me. With feverish haste I worked my way down the hole until I reached the floor of the cave and there I found her — dead.

I left her body there in the cave we had planned to make our honeymoon home and lived in the cave on the top of the hill over the hole. Between the two I and my friends placed the slab of rock on which I am making the pictures and every little while I move the slab and go to the resting place of my Mary where she sleeps looking almost lifelike for her limestone tomb has petrified her body. These things I did not understand then but now as I live them over I know the cause and effect — the scene is shut out of my view — and I awoke.

ACT II. Oration of the Herald or Voice

"Brothers!

"Dreams, symbols and mystical drama are strangely Interwoven in the history of man. In this act we shall see a day in Ancient Egypt. At this stage of man's earth life wonderful monuments were erected — the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid, emblems of the beacons of light which gathering some force here flashed on down through many centuries.

"The part of the people who were seeking knowledge had advanced from idol worshippers to and founded a worship of the sun called by them Re as a visible beneficient god typifying the good principle furnishing light and heat to the world. Centuries later the Sun God and his supposed son by a union with the earth, Mithras, was the God of millions of people — Egyptians, Persians and Hindus. The Parsees of India, fire worshippers of today, and the Gypsies are direct descendents of these people.

"They had made from rock an enormous male figure, 189 feet in length, of a recumbent lion's body and human head. This was a statue to Re and was later named Harmachias. It faces directly east toward the rising sun." The Ancient Egyptians and many succeeding generations have passed away and where these people dwelt is now a sand swept desert, but throughout all the changes and now in silent grandeur stands this statue now known as the Sphinx.

Cheop's pyramid now called the great pyramid Giza, covers over thirteen acres of ground, and it is almost three times as large and is fifty feet higher than St. Peter's Cathedral at Rome. Notwithstanding its enormous size the four sides of the base at this time have a mean error of only about six-tenths of an inch in length and it is only twelve seconds in angle from a perfect square.

"The objects that led up to its erection while first suggested in connection with the provision of a fitting tomb for the Pharoah Cheops or Khufu and his Queen was developed by that wise and good ruler into the idea of a lasting monument to the greatness and achievements being wrought by his people. It was also intended to provide chambers or a temple for rites of the priests of the sun as Khufu had closed the temples of the idols and proclaimed the true worship to be that of Re (the Sun). A priesthood had long before been created as a development of the medicine man or conjurers of the tribes into priests of the idol worshipers and from that it was but a natural step to the establishment of the priesthood in the sun worship.

"And in addition the Architects and Builders who were the most intelligent and learned of all the people, and from whom Khufu had selected the priests of the sun, needed a place to house, safeguard and preserve the secrets and knowledge of the art of architecture and building which at that time and for many centuries later were held as secrets by the craftsmen. The knowledge they had then attained is party preserved to this day in the location, structure and the picture and hieroglyphic carvings on the walls of the pyramid. This pyramid is in reality the first book of history. When the present earth's people shall have learned to read all of that history what a wondrous tale it will unfold to them.

"But some of their knowledge perished with the architects and builders who were destroyed in a battle on the day you shall see presented. Among their achievements was the invention of the first sun-glass. By observing and studying nature they had discovered that heat from volcanic action created stones and would weld stones together. So they invented an enormous sun-glass and a means of storing the sun rays heat, a powerful blast furnace that used this heat to melt sand, making stones, and to weld the stones from which the pyramids were built into solid masses."