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delicious weather into memories to adorn my walls. 

 Every load that was sent home carried my heart and 

 happiness with it. The jewels I had uncovered in 

 the debris, or torn from the ledge in the morning, I 

 saw in the jambs, or mounted high on the corners at 

 night. Every day was filled with great events. The 

 woods held unknown treasures. Those elder giants, 

 frost and rain, had wrought industriously ; now we 

 would unearth from the leaf mould an ugly customer, 

 a stone with a ragged quartz face, or cavernous, and 

 set with rock crystals like great teeth, or else suggest- 

 ing a battered and worm-eaten skull of some old stone 

 dog. These I needed a sprinkling of for their quaint- 

 ness, and to make the wall a true compendium of the 

 locality. Then we would unexpectedly strike upon 

 several loads of beautiful blocks all in a nest ; or we 

 would assault the ledge in a new place with wedge 

 and bar, and rattle down headers and stretchers that 

 surpassed any before. I had to be constantly on the 

 lookout for corner stone, for mine is a house of seven 

 corners, and on the strength and dignity of the cor- 

 ners the beauty of the wall largely depends. But 

 when you bait your hook with your heart, the fish al- 

 ways bite. " The boss is as good as six men in the 

 woods, getting out stone," flatteringly spoke up the 

 master-mason. Certain it is that no such stone was 

 found as when I headed the search. The men saw 

 indifferently with their eyes ; but I looked upon the 

 ground with such desire that I saw what was beneath 

 the moss and the leaves. With them it was hard 



