UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
section of the drill-hole on the corner of each, and 
think of my brother. It was before the time of fuses, 
and I remember he primed the blast by the spindle 
method, and then laid a train of powder with a frag- 
ment of paper at the end of it. A lighted match was 
touched to the paper, and then we ran to a safe dis- 
tance as fast as our legs could carry us. 
How geologic time looks out from the ledges and 
walls of gray rocks unmindful of us human ephem- 
era that pass! It has seen the mountains decay and 
the hills grow old. The huge drift boulders rest on 
the margin of meadows and fields, or stand sentry 
to the woods, and though races and kingdoms pass, 
scarcely the change of a wrinkle disturbs their calm 
stone faces. Yet time gets the better of them also. 
The frowning ledge melts as inevitably as a snow- 
bank. 
Geologic time is the most potent of the gods of 
change. He wields an invisible hammer beside which 
the hammer of Thor is a child’s toy. Its slow, silent 
blows break in through granite rocks as big as a 
house. The traveler sees them along the road when 
he enters Yosemite; he may see them in New Eng- 
land; he may see them on Lake Mohonk, or on the 
Shawangunk Mountains in New York — sheer 
cleavage of rock-masses from fifty to one hundred 
feet through — a clean break while the huge frag- 
ment of the mountain is lying where it fell. It is 
as if the sunbeams or starbeams did it, as if the 
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