behind the obstacles to your husbandry, making the enemies of the
plow stand guard over its products. This is the kind of farming
worth imitating. A stone wall with a good rock bottom will stand as
long as a man lasts. Its only enemy is the frost, and it works so
gently that it is not till after many years that its effect is
perceptible. An old farmer will walk with you through his fields and
say, "This wall I built at such and such a time, or the first year I
came on the farm, or when I owned such and such a span of horses,"
indicating a period thirty, forty, or fifty years back. "This other,
we built the summer so and so worked for me," and he relates some
incident, or mishap, or comical adventures that the memory calls up.
Every line of fence has a history; the mark of his plow or his
crowbar is upon the stones; the sweat of his early manhood put them
in place; in fact, the long black line covered with lichens and in
places tottering to the fall revives long-gone scenes and events in
the life of the farm.

The time for fence-building is usually between seed-time and
harvest, May and June; or in the fall after the crops are gathered.
The work has its picturesque features,--the prying of rocks; supple
forms climbing or swinging from the end of the great levers; or the
blasting of the rocks with powder, the hauling of them into position
with oxen or horses, or with both; the picking of the stone from the
greensward; the bending, athletic forms of the wall-layers; the snug
new fence creeping slowly up the hill or across the field, absorbing
the wind-row of loose stones; and, when the work is done, much
ground reclaimed to the plow and the grass, and a strong barrier
erected.

It is a common complaint that the farm and farm life are not