THE FRIENDLY ROCKS 
tlers used them to line the open fireplaces in their 
stone chimneys. Along the Hudson they used slate, 
which is also nearly fireproof. 
I know a huge iron-stone rock lying at the foot of a 
hill, from beneath which issues one of the coldest 
and sweetest springs in the neighborhood. How the 
haymakers love to go there to drink, and the grazing 
cattle also! Of course, the relation of the rock to the 
spring is accidental. The rocks help make the his- 
tory of the fields, especially the natural history. 
The woodchucks burrow beneath them, and trees 
and plants take root beside them. The delightful 
pools they often form in a trout-stream every angler 
remembers. Their immobility makes the mobile 
water dissolve and excavate the soil around and be- 
neath them, and afford lairs for the big trout. I 
know of a large one that stood on the edge of the 
road where it snubbed the wagon-wheels as they 
came along. For generations it had defied the road- 
menders, till one June day a farmer of more pluck 
and endurance than usual tackled it with a heavy 
crowbar, and, after a prolonged effort, split off a 
huge slab from its top, making it, as the path-master 
said, “haul in its horns.”” When a boy I saw my 
elder brother drill a hole in one with a churn drill, 
and with a charge of powder blast it into four pieces, 
which were used in the foundation of a wall by the 
roadside. As I pass along that road now, after sixty- 
five years, I see the square faces of that rock with a 
57 
