I enjoyed the building of the wall, I think, as much as he did, and
helped him what I could by rolling the larger stones close down to the
edge of the wall. As the old man works he talks, if any one cares to
listen, or if one does not care to listen he is well content to remain
silent among his stones. But I enjoyed listening, for nothing in this
world is so fascinating to me as the story of how a man has come to be
what he is. When we think of it there are no abstract adventures in this
world, but only your adventure and my adventure, and it is only as we
come to know a man that we can see how wonderful his life has been.

He told me all about the great walls and the little walls--miles and
miles of them--he has built in the course of fifty years. He told of
crude boyhood walls when he was a worker for wages only, he told of
proud manhood walls when he took contracts for foundations, retaining
walls, and even for whole buildings, such as churches, where the work
was mostly of stone; he told me of thrilling gains and profits, and of
depressing losses; and he told me of his calm later work, again on
wages, for which he is chosen as a master of his craft. A whole long
lifetime of it--and the last years the best of all!

As we drove up yesterday to select the steps from his piles of old field
stone, riding behind his great, slow, hairy-hoofed horse, in the
battered and ancient wagon, he pointed with his stubby whip to this or
that foundation, the work of his hands.

"Fine job, that," said he, and I looked for the first time in my life at
the beautiful stonework beneath the familiar home of a friend. I had
seen the house a thousand times, and knew well the people in it, but my
unobservant eye had never before rested consciously upon that bit of