built to the glory of God.]

He has done his duty in other ways by his time and his place. He has
brought up a large family of children; and has known sorrow and loss,
as well as happiness and contentment. Two of his children were taken in
one day with pneumonia. He told me about it with a quaver in his old
voice.

"How long ago was it?" I asked.

"Twenty-seven years."

He has sons and daughters left, and two of the sons he has well trained
as stone masons after him. They are good as young men go in a degenerate
age. They insist on working in cement! He has grandchildren in school,
and spoils them.

He is also a man of public interests and upon town-meeting day puts on
his good clothes and sits modestly toward the back of the hall. Though
he rarely says anything he always has a strong opinion, an opinion as
sound and hard as stones and as simple, upon most of the questions that
come up. And he votes as he thinks, though the only man in meeting who
votes that way. For when a man works in the open, laying walls true to
lines and measurements, being honest with natural things, he comes
clear, sane, strong, upon many things. I would sooner trust his judgment
upon matters that are really important as between man and man, and man
and God, than I would trust the town lawyer. And if he has grown a
little testy with some of the innovations of modern life, and thinks
they did everything better forty years ago--and says so--he speaks, at
least, his honest conviction.