Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1895-11-10
MADE THE STONES PREACH.
A Maine Pioneer Who chiseEed Command
 ments and Texts Everywhere.

A Maine Pioneer Who ChiseEed Command
 ments and Texts Everywhere.
 Pioneer Benjamin Edmunds made the stones preach, and left in his barn. yard the most pious and massive fence post in the state of Maine, huge, round pillar as large as hogshead, covered with the ten commandments neatly chiseled.
 Grandpa Edmunds hewed the first path into what is now the town of Rox- bury on the Swift river While he cleared the path and reared cabin, his wife lugged on her back all their earthly possessions.
 Early in the spring of 179o. or there about, he had prospected in the region and picked out the pretty intervale that he afterward cleared and settled upon. A friend accompanied him on that first trip. At dusk, one chilly April night, they reached the spot that promised best, and in the gather ing gloom Mr. Edmunds surveyed the level river bottom from the wooded hillside.
 This suits me; here I settle," he said to his companion. Both men were weary; the tramp had been long and tedious, and Edmund's friend proposed to lie down and sleep. The other pioneer protested, urging that should they sleep they might never awake in that atmosphere, chilled with Aprils snow.
 The man was tired, however, and was bound to sleep. He did so, and GrSndpa Edmunds stoieally stood mp and pounded q tree wi5h club all night in order that he might keep awake. His friend did not freeze to death, but caught cold that ended in fatal pneumonia.
 The most interesting work of brave old Pioneer Edmunds' life was his quaint stone cutting. It was his hob by and diversion. There were no churches in the region around and so the settler used to put his mallet and chisel into his pocket, slip out into the woods and chisel passages of Scripture on the rocks. Pretty soon, so indus trious had he been, that go where he might on his farm some holy precept, some apothegm, some stern command ment, some helpful word of spiritual cheer confronted him. The stones had tongues for him and others who labor ed with him in the Maine wilderness.
 One huge powder he smoothed and rounded up with great pains, and ehis- eled on it the ten commandments in letters three inches high It forms a fence post in the old ba-nyard and is confronted by another pillar bearing the Lords prayer It is said the pres ence of these stern monitors in the barnyard repressed many hired man's s heated argument with refractory steer. Whether they availed to soothe when Bess stepped in the milk pail chronicles aver not.
 Grandpa Edmunds attemp@d other feats in the stone-cutting nne. He had a little dog, of whom he was very fond, and he carved statuette of it that interested visitors may see on the premises.
 Prominently displayed near the corner of the farmhouse is life-size representation of a human head A retired sea captain living in the neigh borhood had Malay whom he had brought home, and Grandpa Edmunds was so impressed by the chaps coun- tenance that he reproduced it in stone.
 The entrance to the yard is set off by stone arch, and over the keystone of this is another human head very neat ly executed. The old gentleman had finished up, at great expense of time and patience, life-size American eagle as an ornament for this stone portal. He was lugging it across the yard to it's position, when he dropped he figure and broke off a wing.
 The stone post with the ten com mandments was directly before his eyes.
 Scattered about the premises are many other figures, all laberieus1y worked out of the stone with such rude instruments as the settler possessed. All are quaint and some are quite cred itable.
 Though Pioneer Edmunds has been laid away in his grave many years, his stone treasures are still carefully pre-, served, even that American eagle who oingloriously and exasperatingly shed his pinion. Lewiston Journal.