TIME AND CHANGE 
learned that the rock had been found in the bed of 
a small creek near by, and that the farmer had given 
a hundred dollars to have it moved to its place in 
front of his house. Had I seen the old farmer I am 
sure I could have added to his interest and pride 
in his monument by telling him that it was Adiron- 
dack gneiss, and had been brought from that region 
on the back, or in the maw, of a glacier, many tens 
of thousands of years ago. But it is highly probable 
that, were he an uneducated man, he would have 
treated my statement with contempt or incredulity. 
Education does at least this for a man: it opens his 
mind and makes him less skeptical about things not 
dreamed of in his philosophy. ‘ 
This boulder had been rolled and worn in its long, 
slow ride till it was nearly round. I have a much 
smaller boulder, probably from the same quarry, 
which I planted at the head of my garden for a seat 
when the hoe gets tired. When it was dropped here 
on the land that is now my field, the bed and valley 
of the Hudson were occupied by the old glacier 
which, during its decline and recession, built up 
the terraces opposite me (where now stands a 
multimillionaire’s copy of an Italian palace), and 
which added to and uncovered the river slopes where 
now my own vineyards are planted. 
The flowing or the creeping of this old ice-sheet, 
so that it could transport large boulders hundreds 
of miles, is one of the most remarkable things about 
164 
