(^Q THE COW 



neighbor. I know that according to his vision he 

 loved and labored for the tiny country church. 

 We cannot tell but that he worked out what was 

 for him a sound and satisfactory philosophy of 

 life as he patiently and skillfully piled stone on 

 stone. But he is gone, and strangers carelessly 

 till his loved acres, and the walls are falling down 

 with the years and no man rebuilds them, and 

 therein lies the pathos of his story. 



This much remains, however, that a stone wall 

 can never become common or mean. While it 

 stands, it is a monument to the industry and abid- 

 ing faith of a strong man, and even when it falls 

 it is a part of the landscape and not a scar on it. 

 Gradually Nature hides it beneath shrubs and run- 

 ning vines, and slowly by geologic law it sinks 

 back into the bosom of the earth from which it 

 came. 



Some things in especial measure breathe the ro- 

 mance and poetry and magic of life on the land. 

 Such are rows of weather-beaten droning bee- 

 hives under gnarled and ancient apple trees, and 

 running streams with cows standing knee deep in 

 clear pools and long shady lanes with many beaten 

 cow-paths, and boys calling the cows when the sun 

 is low, and sunken mossy stone walls, and these 

 last are the best and richest. 



