At play-time today the children and I wandered around the yard and garden, planning and planing for next spring and trying to imagine how everything will look when it is done. We stopped for a while to watch the men working with brick and mortar. It occurred to me how much bricks and mortar are like people. There are just two kinds of people in the world, after all--the "reformers" and the "diplomats." The reformers are like the bricks--strong, sturdy, unyielding, clean-cut, confident. They will break, but they will not bend. Bricks in a pile are hard on each other. They chip and break. A group of "reformers," those people who believe firmly that they are right and that they have a mission to teach the world, also hurt and spoil one another.
Mortar is yielding and pliable--so much so that we can't tell where it will go unless we confine or support it in some way until it hardens. The "diplomatic" people are like that. Anxious always to smooth the path of life and keep people's sharp corners from hitting those with whom they come in contact. "Mortar people" consider the "brick people" very hard and unpleasant to live with. "Brick people" consider the mortar people too soft and yielding in their moral fiber.
Yet how useless a world it would be made up of just one or the other kind of folks! Those with firm convictions tons would be all at cross-purpose, because each would be trying to reform the world in a different way. The diplomats would never get anywhere at all because they would eternally giving up their convictions in order to get on comfortably with everybody.
But, combined in proper proportions, these two sorts of people build a strong, proud wall of citizenship, smooth and united. We need "brick" people for their strength, and "mortar" people for their tolerance. If we are mortar, let us respect the bricks for their rugged staunchness; if we are bricks, let us not despise those who make life more livable by smoothing up our contacts with humanity.