to give his name
too closely), a quiet, thoughtful farmer, long-bearded, low-voiced, and
with that aspect of refinement which an ideal life brings forth even in
quite uninstructed men. At the height of the "Second Advent" excitement
this man resolved to build for himself upon these remote rocks a house
which should escape the wrath to come, and should endure even amid a
burning and transformed earth. Thinking, as he had once said to me,
that, "if the First Dispensation had been strong enough to endure,
there would have been no need of a Second," he resolved to build for
his part something which should possess permanence at least. And there
still remains on that high hillside the small beginning that he made.

There are four low stone walls, three feet thick, built solidly
together without cement, and without the trace of tools. The end-walls
are nine feet high (the sides being lower) and are firmly united by a
strong iron ridge-pole, perhaps fifteen feet long, which is imbedded at
each end in the stone. Other masses of iron lie around unused, in
sheets, bars, and coils, brought with slow labor by the builder from
far below. The whole building was designed to be made of stone and
iron. It is now covered with creeping vines and the debris of the
hillside; but though its construction had been long discontinued when I
saw it, the interior was still kept scrupulously clean through the care
of this modern Solomon, who often visited his shrine.

An arch in the terminal wall admits the visitor to the small roofless
temple, and he sees before him, imbedded in the centre of the floor, a
large smooth block of white marble, where the deed of this spot of land
was to be recorded, in the hope to preserve it even after the globe
should have been burned and renewed. But not a stroke of this
inscription was ever cut, and now the young chestnut boughs droop into
the uncovered interior, and shy forest-birds sing fearlessly among
them, having learned that this house belongs to God, not man. As if to
reassure them, and perhaps in allusion to his own vegetarian habits,
the architect has spread some rough plaster at the head of the
apartment and marked on it in bold characters, "Thou shalt not kill."
Two slabs outside, a little way from the walls, bear these
inscriptions, "Peace on Earth," "Good-Will to Men." When I visited it,
the path was rough and so obstructed with bushes that it was hard to
comprehend how it had afforded passage for the