Which did not also sing
Meanings that else were mute."

John Templeton died on the last day of August, but it was not until some
weeks later that his daughter Julida, that hard-favoured woman, set a
time for the auction. It fell happily upon a mellow autumn day, and as I
drove out I saw the apples ripening in all the orchards along the road,
and the corn was beginning to look brown, and the meadows by the brook
were green with rowen. It was an ideal day for an auction, and farmers
and townsmen came trooping from all parts of the country, for the
Templeton antiques were to be sold.

John Templeton lived in one house for seventy-eight years; he was born
there, and you will find the like of that in few places in America. It
was a fine house for its time, for any time, and not new when John
Templeton was born. A great, solid, square structure, such as they built
when the Puritan spirit was virile in New England, with an almost Greek
beauty of measured lines. It has a fanlight over the front door, windows
exquisitely proportion, and in the center a vast brick chimney. Even
now, though weathered and unpainted, it stands four-square upon the
earth with a kind of natural dignity. A majestic chestnut tree grows
near it, and a large old barn and generous sheds, now somewhat
dilapidated, ramble away to the rear.

Enclosing the fields around about are stone fences representing the
infinite labour of John Templeton's forebears. More toil has gone into
the stone fences of New England, free labour of a free people, than ever
went into the slave-driven building of the Pyramids of Egypt.

I knew John Templeton in his old age--a stiff, weather-beaten old man