THE FRIENDLY ROCKS 



once becomes a wanderer, it is restless ever after, 

 and stirs in its sleep. Heat and cold expand and 

 contract it, and make it creep down an incline. 

 Hitch your rock to a sunbeam, and come back in a 

 hundred years, and see how much it has moved. I 

 know a great platform of rock weighing hundreds of 

 tons, and large enough to build a house upon, that 

 has slid down the hill from the ledges above, and 

 that is pushing a roll of turf before it as a boat pushes 

 a wave, but stand there till you are gray, and you 

 will see no motion; return in a century, and you will 

 doubtless find that the great rock raft has pro- 

 gressed a few inches. What a sense of leisure such 

 things give us hurrying mortals ! 



One of my favorite pastimes from boyhood up, 

 when in my home country in the Catskills, has been 

 to prowl about under the ledges of the dark gray 

 shelving rocks that jut out from the sides of the hills 

 and mountains, often forming a roof over one's 

 head many feet in extent, and now and then shelter- 

 ing a cool, sweet spring, and more often sheltering 

 the exquisite moss-covered nest of the phoebe-bird. 

 These ledges appealed to the wild and adventurous 

 J in the boy. The primitive cave-dweller in me, which 

 is barely skin-deep in most boys, found something 

 congenial there; the air smelled good; it seemed 

 fresher and more primitive than the outside air; it 

 was the breath of the rocks and of the everlasting 

 hills ; the home feeling which I had amid such scenes 



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