TIME AND CHANGE 
the ruins of their intrenchments are everywhere 
visible. 
When I was a boy on the farm we never asked 
ourselves questions about the stones and rocks that 
encumbered the land — whence they came, or what 
the agency was that brought them. The farmers 
believed the land was created just as we saw it — 
stones, boulders, soil, gravel-pits, hills, mountains, 
and all— and doubtless wished in their hearts 
that the Creator had not been so particular about 
the rocks and stones, or had made an exception 
in favor of their own fields. Rocks and stones were 
good for fences and foundations, and for various 
other uses, but they were a great hindrance to the 
cultivation of the soil. I once heard a farmer boast 
that he had very strong land — it had to be strong 
to hold up such a crop of rocks and stones. When 
the Eastern farmer moved west into the prairie 
states, or south into the cotton-growing states, 
he probably never asked himself why the Creator 
had not cumbered the ground with rocks and stones 
in those sections, as he had in New York and New 
England. South of the line that runs irregularly 
through middle New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, 
Indiana, Tlinois, Iowa, and so on to the Rockies, 
he will find few loose stones scattered over the soil, 
no detached boulders sitting upon the surface, no 
hills or mounds of gravel and sand, no clay banks 
packed full of rounded stones, little and big, no 
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