{"id":"01KG8AMXWNS6BDGQZA83N37PV7","cid":"bafkreibs5gpvkytww563sy4n4tdp5pa62xdasjq2ezqzcbyuu7mdeyxiwq","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5959,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":5905,"text":"while to publish it abroad. So that in real truth, they might have seen\r\nit, and yet afterward have forgotten so inconsiderable a circumstance.\r\nIn short, this wondrous Memnon Stone could be no Memnon Stone to them;\r\nnothing but a huge stumbling-block, deeply to be regretted as a vast\r\nprospective obstacle in the way of running a handy little cross-road\r\nthrough that wild part of the Manor.\r\n\r\nNow one day while reclining near its flank, and intently eying it, and\r\nthinking how surprising it was, that in so long-settled a country he\r\nshould have been the first discerning and appreciative person to light\r\nupon such a great natural curiosity, Pierre happened to brush aside\r\nseveral successive layers of old, gray-haired, close cropped, nappy\r\nmoss, and beneath, to his no small amazement, he saw rudely hammered in\r\nthe rock some half-obliterate initials--\"S. ye W.\" Then he knew, that\r\nignorant of the stone, as all the simple country round might\r\nimmemorially have been, yet was not himself the only human being who had\r\ndiscovered that marvelous impending spectacle: but long and long ago, in\r\nquite another age, the stone had been beheld, and its wonderfulness\r\nfully appreciated--as the painstaking initials seemed to testify--by\r\nsome departed man, who, were he now alive, might possibly wag a beard\r\nold as the most venerable oak of centuries' growth. But who,--who in\r\nMethuselah's name,--who might have been this \"S. ye W?\" Pierre\r\npondered long, but could not possibly imagine; for the initials, in\r\ntheir antiqueness, seemed to point to some period before the era of\r\nColumbus' discovery of the hemisphere. Happening in the end to mention\r\nthe strange matter of these initials to a white-haired old gentleman,\r\nhis city kinsman, who, after a long and richly varied, but unfortunate\r\nlife, had at last found great solace in the Old Testament, which he was\r\ncontinually studying with ever-increasing admiration; this white-haired\r\nold kinsman, after having learnt all the particulars about the\r\nstone--its bulk, its height, the precise angle of its critical\r\nimpendings, and all that,--and then, after much prolonged cogitation\r\nupon it, and several long-drawn sighs, and aged looks of hoar\r\nsignificance, and reading certain verses in Ecclesiastes; after all\r\nthese tedious preliminaries, this not-at-all-to-be-hurried white-haired\r\nold kinsman, had laid his tremulous hand upon Pierre's firm young\r\nshoulder, and slowly whispered--\"Boy; 'tis Solomon the Wise.\" Pierre\r\ncould not repress a merry laugh at this; wonderfully diverted by what\r\nseemed to him so queer and crotchety a conceit; which he imputed to the\r\nalledged dotage of his venerable kinsman, who he well knew had once\r\nmaintained, that the old Scriptural Ophir was somewhere on our northern\r\nsea-coast; so no wonder the old gentleman should fancy that King Solomon\r\nmight have taken a trip--as a sort of amateur supercargo--of some Tyre\r\nor Sidon gold-ship across the water, and happened to light on the Memnon\r\nStone, while rambling about with bow and quiver shooting partridges.\r\n\r\nBut merriment was by no means Pierre's usual mood when thinking of this\r\nstone; much less when seated in the woods, he, in the profound\r\nsignificance of that deep forest silence, viewed its marvelous\r\nimpendings. A flitting conceit had often crossed him, that he would like\r\nnothing better for a head-stone than this same imposing pile; in which,\r\nat times, during the soft swayings of the surrounding foliage, there\r\nseemed to lurk some mournful and lamenting plaint, as for some sweet boy\r\nlong since departed in the antediluvian time.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKRN2V3Z8JTW27R93R4XR","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMXWEQZ4S1YEQPY3T3ASB","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AMXWNKDSDYS0G60BAG19M","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:53.141Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:18.542Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}