sed!

He built that foundation, and this chimney, he worked on the tower of
the Baptist church in the town, "and never yet has there been a crack in
her, winter or summer"; and more than forty years ago he laid the
cornerstone of the old schoolhouse, the foundation walls of which stand
to-day as sound and strong as they were when they were put down.

In dry walls I think the old stone mason takes the greatest pride of
all: for it is in the dry wall--I mean by that a wall laid without
mortar--that the sheer art of the mason comes most into play. Any one
can throw a wall together if he has mortar to make it stick, but a dry
wall must stand out for what it is, built solid from the bottom up, each
stone resting securely upon those below it, and braced and nested in by
the sheer skill of the mason. The art of the dry wall is the ancient
heritage of New England and speaks not only of the sincerity and the
conscientiousness of the old Puritan spirit but strikes the higher note
of beauty. Many of the older walls I know are worth going far to see,
for they exhibit a rare sense of form and proportion, and are sometimes
set in the landscape with a skill that only the Master-Artist himself
could exceed. Those old, hard-wrought stone fences of the Burnham Hills
and Crewsbury, the best of them, were honestly built, and built to last
a thousand years. A beautiful art--and one that is passing away! It is
the dry wall that stands of itself that the old stone mason loves best
of all.

As we drove along the road the old man pointed out to me with his stubby
whip so many examples of his work that it seemed finally as if he had
borne a hand in nearly everything done in this neighbourhood in the last
half-century. He has literally built himself into the country and into
the town, and at seventy years of age he can look back upon it all with
honest pride. It stands. No jerry-work anywhere. No cracks. It stands.

I never realized before how completely the neighbourhood rests upon the
work of this simple old man. He _founded_ most of the homes here, and
upon his secure walls rest many of the stores, the churches, and the
schools of the countryside. I see again how important each man is to the
complete fabric of civilization and know that we are to leave no one
out, despise no one, look down upon no one.

He told me stories of this ancient settler and of that.

He was a powerful queer man--he wanted the moss left on his stones
when I put '