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Updated: May 10, 2025
"For the miracle to happen, in fact, the sieve must be held as level as the top rail of a mason's T-shaped plumb-line frame, and as steady as if clamped in a vise.
He told her how she must count the number of heads, and explained to her the advantage of the plumb-line in determining the action of the figure. Mildred was much interested; she wondered if she would be able to put the instruction she was receiving into practice, and was disappointed when the model got down from the table and put on his trousers.
Spinning deftly into its place, as if dropped from heaven with a plumb-line, a wreath of artificial flowers landed lightly on his temples, while a woman's laugh, soft and silvery, accompanied with its pleasant music this unexpected coronation. Tom looked up aghast, but he was not quick enough to catch sight of more than the hem of a garment, the turn of an ankle.
Certainly nobody knew or was likely to know; for the Master of Saint Bede's was a person, the depth of whose nature could not be fathomed easily with any line. Possibly because, old as he was, it happened, as does happen in some lives, that the right plumb-line, by the right hand, had never been dropped yet.
Some have tried it with a silk thread as a plumb-line, some with spun-yarn threads, and various other materials and contrivances. It has even been tried by exploding petards and ringing bells in the deep sea, when it was supposed that an echo or reverberation might be heard, and, from the known rate at which sound travels through water, the depth might thus be ascertained.
Under the depths there are unspeakable things that writhe. His plumb-line touches them and they squirm. He bends his head from the clouds to do it. Is it worth doing? I don't know. But this I do know that within the range of all fiction of all lands and of all times no character has so overwhelmed me as the character of Susan Lenox. She is as real as life and as unreal. She is Life.
And he at last understood the character of this funereal, termite-like labour these chance burrowings continued according to requirements, without art, method, or symmetry. The rugged soil was ever ascending and descending, the sides of the gallery snaked: neither plumb-line nor square had been used.
The descent, however, has not the brute speed which the force of gravity would give it, if uncontrolled. It is governed by the action of the spinnerets, which contract or expand their pores, or close them entirely, at the faller's pleasure. And so, with gentle moderation she pays out this living plumb-line, of which my lantern clearly shows me the plumb, but not always the line.
The surface of quicksilver is exactly level and so at right angles to the true direction of the plumb-line or the force of gravity. Its direction is therefore a little different at two different places on the surface, and the change can be measured by its effect on the apparent direction of a star seen by reflection from the surface.
He was the first to fasten things together with glue; he invented the plumb-line and the auger; and he showed seamen how to put up masts in their ships and how to rig the sails to them with ropes. He built a stone palace for AEgeus, the young king of Athens, and beautified the Temple of Athena which stood on the great rocky hill in the middle of the city.
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