[PW] Origin of purpose=cathedral anecdote

[Hilary Caws-Elwitt]

Hi everyone,

Patron says:

"I am looking for the original story and source that this is referring to:
'There is an old story, probably apocryphal, about three men working in a quarry 
who were asked what they were doing. The first man said that he was breaking big 
rocks into little ones. The second man said he was making a living. The third 
man said that he was building a cathedral.'"

 From what I can tell, it is indeed apocryphal. Here is what I told him:

"There are literally hundreds of different versions of this story, all over the 
web and all over books. A search in Google Books on the key phrase 'I'm building 
a cathedral' brings up 179 results. Unfortunately, none of them are full-text. 
In the first 100, it looks like the earliest results are from 1925:
http://books.google.com/books?lr=&q=%22i%27m+building+a+cathedral%22&sa=N&start=30
(scroll down to 'Cathedral Age')

I don't find a pre-1923 source in Project Gutenberg, but I find it hard to 
believe that it wasn't already widespread in the 1920s since it appears in other 
sources close in time to 'Cathedral Age' in Google Books."

He is still searching for an original source, so I turn to the collective wisdom 
of wombats.

I checked a few quotation and phrase books as well, but this type of anecdote 
doesn't seem to be covered. Any other ideas for sources? I don't have access to 
a historical newspaper database.

Thanks!
-- 
--
Hilary Caws-Elwitt, Systems & Public Services Librarian
Community Information Network Administrator/Programmer
Susquehanna County Library, 2 Monument Sq, Montrose PA 18801
Phone 570-278-1881 -- Fax 570-278-9336
info at susqcolibrary.org -- http://www.susqcolibrary.org
info at susquehannaCIN.net -- http://www.susquehannaCIN.net