Seeing that they abide we suppose that we cannot change nor cease to be.
Personally I cannot explain these sentiments of mine in any other way than to regard them as some sort of fetich worship.
And when I consider that those stones are very like other stones, that they have been brought from I know not where, by whom I care not, to be built into a wall by workmen who lived and died a century before I was even thought of, I realize the childishness of the illusion, which I indulge in spite of myself, that it can extend any sort of spiritual protection to me; I comprehend only too well what a frail and unstable base has that that symbolizes for me the permanency of life.
Those who have never had a permanent home, but who have from infancy been taken from place to place, living in lodgings meantime, may not be able to appreciate these sentiments.
But among those who have daily gathered about the same hearthstone, there are, I am sure, many who, without confessing it, are susceptible in varying degrees to impressions of this sort.

And do not such people often, because of an old stone wall, a garden known and loved since childhood, an old terrace which has become in indestructible part of their memory, or an old tree that has not changed form within their lives, seek a warrant for their own hope of immortality?
And doubtless, alas! before their birth these objects lent the same delusive countenance to others, to those unknown now turned to dust and gone to nothingness, who may not even have been of their blood and race..