e water's edge. The marks of tools could be
seen on them, showing where blocks of stone had evidently been split
off. I picked up a piece of the rock and examined it closely. It
proved to be made up of three kinds of material. First, there were
tiny sparkling bits of mica. In some places there are mica mines
yielding big sheets of this curious mineral which is used in the doors
of stoves and the little windows of automobile curtains. With the
point of a knife the bits in my piece of granite could be split into
tiny sheets as thin as paper. The second material was quartz. This was
grayish-white and looked somewhat like glass. The third material was
feldspar. This, too, was whitish, but one or two sides of each bit
were flat, as if they had not been broken, but split. This is the most
common kind of granite. There are many varieties. Some of them are
almost white, some dark gray, others pale pink, and yet others deep
red. It is found in more than half the States of the Union.

This quarry had been given up and allowed to fill with water; but it
was a granite country, and farther down the road there was another,
where scores of men were hard at work. This second quarry was part-way
up a hill; or rather, it was a hill of granite which men were digging
out and carrying away. When they began to open the quarry, much of the
rock was covered with dirt and loose stones, and even the granite that
showed aboveground was worn and broken and stained. This is called
"trap rock." The easiest way to get rid of it is to blast with
dynamite and then carry away the dirt and fragments. Next comes the
getting out of great masses of rock to use, some of them perhaps long
enough to make the pillars of a large building.

[Illustration: OPENING A GRANITE QUARRY

_Courtesy Jones Brothers Company._

The first thing to do is to strip off the soil from the stone. Then,
as the blocks are cut out, the big derrick lifts and loads them on
waiting cars.]

Now, granite is a hard stone, but there is no special difficulty in
cutting it if you know how. In the old days, when people wished to
split a big boulder, they sometimes built a fire beside it, and when
it was well heated, they dropped a heavy iron ball upon it. King's
Chapel in Boston was built of stone broken in this way. To break from
a cliff, however, a block of granite big enough to make a long pillar
is a different matter, and this is what the men were doing. First of
all, the foreman had