em in; never a hammer touched the facings of _his_ wall...

"That is properly a woman's wall. She was the boss, you might call it,
and wanted stone, but _he_ wanted brick. So you see the front, where
people can see it, is of stone, but the sides is all brick."

Thus like the true artist that he is, he has not only built himself his
own honesty, truth, skill, into the town, but he has built in the
inexhaustible peculiarities, the radiant charm, the hates and the loves,
of the people of this place. He has mirrored his own little age in
stone. He knows the town, indeed, better than most of us, having a kind
of stone-age knowledge of it--the fundamental things men build in when
they set about building permanently.

"And that is what you might call a spite-wall," said he, showing me a
long wall leading between two shady homes, making one of them a prison
on the south, and the other a prison on the north. He told me the story
of an ancient and bitter quarrel between two old friends, a story which
sounded to-day among spring blossoms like the account of some ancient
baronial feud.

But if the old stone mason has built walls to keep enemies apart how
many more walls has he built to keep friends together? How many times
has he been consulted by shy lovers seeking a foundation for a new home,
a new family, how many times by Darby and Joan planning a resting place
for the sunny closing years of their lives! He could point, indeed, to
one wall that symbolized hatred; all the others meant homes, roof-trees,
families, or they were the foundations for the working places of men, or
else, like the tower of the church, they pointed heavenward and were
built to the glory of God.

The old stone mason has not the slightest idea that he has done anything
unusual or wonderful. He is as simple and honest a man as ever I knew;
and if he has pride, simple and honest also in that. He was anxious not
to charge me too much for the stone I bought--in an age like this! I
have never talked with him about God, or about religion: I had no need
to.

[Illustration: All the others meant homes, roof-trees, families, or
else, like the tower of the church, they pointed heavenward, and were
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