24 WINTER SKETCHES. 



to ruin grown," for the stone walls stand at the 

 borders of the road as they were laid up two 

 centuries ago. Why is it that immortal man 

 so soon becomes forgotten and unknown, while 

 these old stone walls stand as they were piled, 

 and from century to century bid defiance to 

 the ravages of time? 



I am sure that we all look with a reflection 

 like this on the memorials of the past, and 

 often ask of ourselves how it can be that he 

 whose desire it is to live on and to live forever 

 in this world of happiness which might increase 

 as year follows year, should be cut off and 

 consigned to the dust, while these inanimate 

 things, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, enjoy- 

 ing nothing, should be gifted with a useless 

 immortality. 



Still, as I looked at the faces of some of 

 those old farmers and talked with many of them 

 who neither knew nor cared for anything in 

 the outside world, I almost imagined that they 

 were the men who had laid up these very walls, 

 and that they too were stolidly immortal. Cer- 

 tain I was that if their ancestors could come 

 back to earth, they would be as much at home 

 among their descendants as among the fences 

 they had built. 



