If you would build your house on truly historic 

 ground, lay it on foundation of pasture stones, and 

 incorporate, as it were. Time itself into the struc- 

 ture. This is to let the very elements work for 

 you. On many a farm the boulders are as good a 

 crop as any; when they are gathered into the 

 walls to give room for one more lucrative, this 

 value at least of the farm is still represented. The 

 fields have produced but one crop of boulders, and 

 only the ages could mature this. If the pastures 

 must lose this ancient beauty, let the house gain 

 by it. Build it into your chimney. Take it to 

 your hearth that it may not be lost. Let the 

 boulder tell its story by the light of the hickory 

 logs. 



There is a rustic notion that boulders somehow 

 groiv, in some inexplicable manner enlarging like 

 pufFballs and drawing sustenance from the earth — 

 and what could be more puzzling to the unin- 

 itiated than the presence of these pasture stones? 

 His was an ingenious mind who conjured up that 

 remote ice age from this fragmentary evidence 

 and derived a history from these scattered letters 

 and elliptical sentences. It was like tracing the 

 stars to their origin. 



128 



