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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Stone Face, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Great Stone Face
+       And Other Tales Of The White Mountains
+
+Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+Release Date: February 25, 2006 [EBook #1916]
+Last Updated: December 15, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT STONE FACE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT STONE FACE AND OTHER TALES OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+
+By Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+
+1882
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     Introduction
+     The Great Stone Face
+     The Ambitious Guest
+     The Great Carbuncle
+     Sketches From Memory
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+THE first three numbers in this collection are tales of the White Hills
+in New Hampshire. The passages from Sketches from Memory show that
+Hawthorne had visited the mountains in one of his occasional rambles
+from home, but there are no entries in his Note Books which give
+accounts of such a visit. There is, however, among these notes
+the following interesting paragraph, written in 1840 and clearly
+foreshadowing The Great Stone Face:
+
+‘The semblance of a human face to be formed on the side of a mountain,
+or in the fracture of a small stone, by a lusus naturae [freak of
+nature]. The face is an object of curiosity for years or centuries, and
+by and by a boy is born whose features gradually assume the aspect of
+that portrait. At some critical juncture the resemblance is found to be
+perfect. A prophecy may be connected.’
+
+It is not impossible that this conceit occurred to Hawthorne before he
+had himself seen the Old Man of the Mountain, or the Profile, in the
+Franconia Notch which is generally associated in the minds of readers
+with The Great Stone Face.
+
+In The Ambitious Guest he has made use of the incident still told to
+travellers through the Notch, of the destruction of the Willey family
+in August, 1826. The house occupied by the family was on the slope of
+a mountain, and after a long drought there was a terrible tempest which
+not only raised the river to a great height but loosened the surface of
+the mountain so that a great landslide took place. The house was in
+the track of the slide, and the family rushed out of doors. Had they
+remained within they would have been safe, for a ledge above the house
+parted the avalanche so that it was diverted into two paths and swept
+past the house on either side. Mr. and Mrs. Willey, their five children,
+and two hired men were crushed under the weight of earth, rocks, and
+trees.
+
+In the Sketches from Memory Hawthorne gives an intimation of the tale
+which he might write and did afterward write of The Great Carbuncle. The
+paper is interesting as showing what were the actual experiences out of
+which he formed his imaginative stories.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT STONE FACE and Other Tales Of The White Mountains
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT STONE FACE
+
+One afternoon, when the sun was going down, a mother and her little boy
+sat at the door of their cottage, talking about the Great Stone Face.
+They had but to lift their eyes, and there it was plainly to be seen,
+though miles away, with the sunshine brightening all its features.
+And what was the Great Stone Face? Embosomed amongst a family of
+lofty mountains, there was a valley so spacious that it contained many
+thousand inhabitants. Some of these good people dwelt in log-huts, with
+the black forest all around them, on the steep and difficult hillsides.
+Others had their homes in comfortable farm-houses, and cultivated the
+rich soil on the gentle slopes or level surfaces of the valley. Others,
+again, were congregated into populous villages, where some wild,
+highland rivulet, tumbling down from its birthplace in the upper
+mountain region, had been caught and tamed by human cunning, and
+compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories. The inhabitants of
+this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many modes of life. But all
+of them, grown people and children, had a kind of familiarity with the
+Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift of distinguishing
+this grand natural phenomenon more perfectly than many of their
+neighbors.
+
+The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature in her mood of majestie
+playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a mountain by some
+immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as,
+when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of
+the human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan,
+had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad
+arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its long
+bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have
+rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other.
+True it is, that if the spectator approached too near, he lost the
+outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern only a heap of
+ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon another.
+Retracing his steps, however, the wondrous features would again be seen;
+and the farther he withdrew from them, the more like a human face, with
+all its original divinity intact, did they appear; until, as it grew dim
+in the distance, with the clouds and glorified vapor of the mountains
+clustering about it, the Great Stone Face seemed positively to be alive.
+
+It was a happy lot for children to grow up to manhood or womanhood with
+the Great Stone Face before their eyes, for all the features were noble,
+and the expression was at once grand and sweet, as if it were the glow
+of a vast, warm heart, that embraced all mankind in its affections, and
+had room for more. It was an education only to look at it. According to
+the belief of many people, the valley owed much of its fertility to this
+benign aspect that was continually beaming over it, illuminating the
+clouds, and infusing its tenderness into the sunshine.
+
+As we began with saying, a mother and her little boy sat at their
+cottage-door, gazing at the Great Stone Face, and talking about it. The
+child’s name was Ernest.
+
+‘Mother,’ said he, while the Titanic visage miled on him, ‘I wish that
+it could speak, for it looks so very kindly that its voice must needs
+be pleasant. If I were to See a man with such a face, I should love him
+dearly.’ ‘If an old prophecy should come to pass,’ answered his mother,
+‘we may see a man, some time for other, with exactly such a face as
+that.’ ‘What prophecy do you mean, dear mother?’ eagerly inquired
+Ernest. ‘Pray tell me all about it!’
+
+So his mother told him a story that her own mother had told to her, when
+she herself was younger than little Ernest; a story, not of things that
+were past, but of what was yet to come; a story, nevertheless, so very
+old, that even the Indians, who formerly inhabited this valley, had
+heard it from their forefathers, to whom, as they affirmed, it had been
+murmured by the mountain streams, and whispered by the wind among the
+tree-tops. The purport was, that, at some future day, a child should
+be born hereabouts, who was destined to become the greatest and noblest
+personage of his time, and whose countenance, in manhood, should bear
+an exact resemblance to the Great Stone Face. Not a few old-fashioned
+people, and young ones likewise, in the ardor of their hopes, still
+cherished an enduring faith in this old prophecy. But others, who had
+seen more of the world, had watched and waited till they were weary, and
+had beheld no man with such a face, nor any man that proved to be much
+greater or nobler than his neighbors, concluded it to be nothing but
+an idle tale. At all events, the great man of the prophecy had not yet
+appeared.
+
+‘O mother, dear mother!’ cried Ernest, clapping his hands above his head,
+‘I do hope that I shall live to see him!’
+
+His mother was an affectionate and thoughtful woman, and felt that it
+was wisest not to discourage the generous hopes of her little boy. So
+she only said to him, ‘Perhaps you may.’
+
+And Ernest never forgot the story that his mother told him. It was
+always in his mind, whenever he looked upon the Great Stone Face.
+He spent his childhood in the log-cottage where he was born, and was
+dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in many things, assisting
+her much with his little hands, and more with his loving heart. In this
+manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, he grew up to be a mild,
+quiet, unobtrusive boy, and sun-browned with labor in the fields, but
+with more intelligence brightening his aspect than is seen in many lads
+who have been taught at famous schools. Yet Ernest had had no teacher,
+save only that the Great Stone Face became one to him. When the toil
+of the day was over, he would gaze at it for hours, until he began to
+imagine that those vast features recognized him, and gave him a smile of
+kindness and encouragement, responsive to his own look of veneration.
+We must not take upon us to affirm that this was a mistake, although
+the Face may have looked no more kindly at Ernest than at all the
+world besides. But the secret was that the boy’s tender and confiding
+simplicity discerned what other people could not see; and thus the love,
+which was meant for all, became his peculiar portion.
+
+About this time there went a rumor throughout the valley, that the great
+man, foretold from ages long ago, who was to bear a resemblance to
+the Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems that, many years
+before, a young man had migrated from the valley and settled at a
+distant seaport, where, after getting together a little money, he had
+set up as a shopkeeper. His name but I could never learn whether it was
+his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success
+in life--was Gathergold.
+
+Being shrewd and active, and endowed by Providence with that inscrutable
+faculty which develops itself in what the world calls luck, he became an
+exceedingly rich merchant, and owner of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomed
+ships. All the countries of the globe appeared to join hands for the
+mere purpose of adding heap after heap to the mountainous accumulation
+of this one man’s wealth. The cold regions of the north, almost within
+the gloom and shadow of the Arctic Circle, sent him their tribute in the
+shape of furs; hot Africa sifted for him the golden sands of her rivers,
+and gathered up the ivory tusks of her great elephants out of the
+forests; the east came bringing him the rich shawls, and spices, and
+teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity of large
+pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her
+mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a
+profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold
+within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of Midas, in the fable,
+that whatever he touched with his finger immediately glistened, and grew
+yellow, and was changed at once into sterling metal, or, which suited
+him still better, into piles of coin. And, when Mr. Gathergold had
+become so very rich that it would have taken him a hundred years only
+to count his wealth, he bethought himself of his native valley, and
+resolved to go back thither, and end his days where he was born. With
+this purpose in view, he sent a skilful architect to build him such a
+palace as should be fit for a man of his vast wealth to live in.
+
+As I have said above, it had already been rumored in the valley that
+Mr. Gathergold had turned out to be the prophetic personage so long and
+vainly looked for, and that his visage was the perfect and undeniable
+similitude of the Great Stone Face. People were the more ready to
+believe that this must needs be the fact, when they beheld the splendid
+edifice that rose, as if by enchantment, on the site of his father’s
+old weather-beaten farmhouse. The exterior was of marble, so dazzlingly
+white that it seemed as though the whole structure might melt away in
+the sunshine, like those humbler ones which Mr. Gathergold, in his
+young play-days, before his fingers were gifted with the touch of
+transmutation, had been accustomed to build of snow. It had a richly
+ornamented portico supported by tall pillars, beneath which was a lofty
+door, studded with silver knobs, and made of a kind of variegated wood
+that had been brought from beyond the sea. The windows, from the floor
+to the ceiling of each stately apartment, were composed, respectively
+of but one enormous pane of glass, so transparently pure that it was
+said to be a finer medium than even the vacant atmosphere. Hardly
+anybody had been permitted to see the interior of this palace; but it
+was reported, and with good semblance of truth, to be far more gorgeous
+than the outside, insomuch that whatever was iron or brass in other
+houses was silver or gold in this; and Mr. Gathergold’s bedchamber,
+especially, made such a glittering appearance that no ordinary man would
+have been able to close his eyes there. But, on the other hand, Mr.
+Gathergold was now so inured to wealth, that perhaps he could not have
+closed his eyes unless where the gleam of it was certain to find its way
+beneath his eyelids.
+
+In due time, the mansion was finished; next came the upholsterers, with
+magnificent furniture; then, a whole troop of black and white servants,
+the haringers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majestic person, was
+expected to arrive at sunset. Our friend Ernest, meanwhile, had been
+deeply stirred by the idea that the great man, the noble man, the man of
+prophecy, after so many ages of delay, was at length to be made manifest
+to his native valley. He knew, boy as he was, that there were a thousand
+ways in which Mr. Gathergold, with his vast wealth, might transform
+himself into an angel of beneficence, and assume a control over human
+affairs as wide and benignant as the smile of the Great Stone Face.
+Full of faith and hope, Ernest doubted not that what the people said
+was true, and that now he was to behold the living likeness of those
+wondrous features on the mountainside. While the boy was still gazing
+up the valley, and fancying, as he always did, that the Great Stone Face
+returned his gaze and looked kindly at him, the rumbling of wheels was
+heard, approaching swiftly along the winding road.
+
+‘Here he comes!’ cried a group of people who were assembled to witness
+the arrival. ‘Here comes the great Mr. Gathergold!’
+
+A carriage, drawn by four horses, dashed round the turn of the road.
+Within it, thrust partly out of the window, appeared the physiognomy
+of the old man, with a skin as yellow as if his own Midas-hand had
+transmuted it. He had a low forehead, small, sharp eyes, puckered about
+with innumerable wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he made still
+thinner by pressing them forcibly together.
+
+‘The very image or the Great Stone Face!’ shouted the people. ‘Sure
+enough, the old prophecy is true; and here we have the great man come,
+at last!’
+
+And, what greatly perplexed Ernest, they seemed actually to believe that
+here was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced
+to be an old beggar woman and two little beggar-children, stragglers
+from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held
+out their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously
+beseeching charity. A yellow claw the very same that had dawed together
+so much wealth--poked itself out of the coach-window, and dropt some
+copper coins upon the ground; so that, though the great man’s name seems
+to have been Gathergold, he might just as suitably have been nicknamed
+Scattercopper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest shout, and evidently
+with as much good faith as ever, the people bellowed ‘He is the very
+image of the Great Stone Face!’ But Ernest turned sadly from the
+wrinkled shrewdness of that sordid visage, and gazed up the valley,
+where, amid a gathering mist, gilded by the last sunbeams, he could
+still distinguish those glorious features which had impressed themselves
+into his soul. Their aspect cheered him. What did the benign lips seem
+to say?
+
+‘He will come! Fear not, Ernest; the man will come!’
+
+The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a boy. He had grown to be a
+young man now. He attracted little notice from the other inhabitants
+of the valley; for they saw nothing remarkable in his way of life, save
+that, when the labor of the day was over, he still loved to go apart and
+gaze and meditate upon the Great Stone Face. According to their idea of
+the matter, it was a folly, indeed, but pardonable, inasmuch as Ernest
+was industrious, kind, and neighborly, and neglected no duty for the
+sake of indulging this idle habit. They knew not that the Great Stone
+Face had become a teacher to him, and that the sentiment which was
+expressed in it would enlarge the young man’s heart, and fill it with
+wider and deeper sympathies than other hearts. They knew not that thence
+would come a better wisdom than could be learned from books, and a
+better life than could be moulded on the defaced example of other human
+lives. Neither did Ernest know that the thoughts and affections which
+came to him so naturally, in the fields and at the fireside, and
+wherever he communed with himself, were of a higher tone than those
+which all men shared with him. A simple soul--simple as when his mother
+first taught him the old prophecy--he beheld the marvellous features
+beaming adown the valley, and still wondered that their human
+counterpart was so long in making his appearance.
+
+By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and buried; and the oddest
+part of the matter was, that his wealth, which was the body and spirit
+of his existence, had disappeared before his death, leaving nothing of
+him but a living skeleton, covered over with a wrinkled, yellow skin.
+Since the melting away of his gold, it had been very generally conceded
+that there was no such striking resemblance, after all, betwixt the
+ignoble features of the ruined merchant and that majestic face upon the
+mountainside. So the people ceased to honor him during his lifetime,
+and quietly consigned him to forgetfulness after his decease. Once in
+a while, it is true, his memory was brought up in connection with the
+magnificent palace which he had built, and which had long ago been
+turned into a hotel for the accommodation of strangers, multitudes of
+whom came, every summer, to visit that famous natural curiosity, the
+Great Stone Face. Thus, Mr. Gathergold being discredited and thrown into
+the shade, the man of prophecy was yet to come.
+
+It so happened that a native-born son of the valley, many years before,
+had enlisted as a soldier, and, after a great deal of hard fighting,
+had now become an illustrious commander. Whatever he may be called in
+history, he was known in camps and on the battlefield under the nickname
+of Old Blood-and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now infirm with
+age and wounds, and weary of the turmoil of a military life, and of the
+roll of the drum and the clangor of the trumpet, that had so long been
+ringing in his ears, had lately signified a purpose of returning to his
+native valley, hoping to find repose where he remembered to have left
+it. The inhabitants, his old neighbors and their grown-up children, were
+resolved to welcome the renowned warrior with a salute of cannon and a
+public dinner; and all the more enthusiastically, it being affirmed
+that now, at last, the likeness of the Great Stone Face had actually
+appeared. An aid-de-camp of Old Blood-and-Thunder, travelling through
+the valley, was said to have been struck with the resemblance. Moreover
+the schoolmates and early acquaintances of the general were ready to
+testify, on oath, that, to the best of their recollection, the aforesaid
+general had been exceedingly like the majestic image, even when a boy,
+only that the idea had never occurred to them at that period. Great,
+therefore, was the excitement throughout the valley; and many people,
+who had never once thought of glancing at the Great Stone Face for years
+before, now spent their time in gazing at it, for the sake of knowing
+exactly how General Blood-and-Thunder looked.
+
+On the day of the great festival, Ernest, with all the other people of
+the valley, left their work, and proceeded to the spot where the sylvan
+banquet was prepared. As he approached, the loud voice of the Rev. Dr.
+Battleblast was heard, beseeching a blessing on the good things set
+before them, and on the distinguished friend of peace in whose honor
+they were assembled. The tables were arranged in a cleared space of the
+woods, shut in by the surrounding trees, except where a vista opened
+eastward, and afforded a distant view of the Great Stone Face. Over the
+general’s chair, which was a relic from the home of Washington, there
+was an arch of verdant boughs, with the laurel profusely intermixed,
+and surmounted by his country’s banner, beneath which he had won his
+victories. Our friend Ernest raised himself on his tiptoes, in hopes
+to get a glimpse of the celebrated guest; but there was a mighty crowd
+about the tables anxious to hear the toasts and speeches, and to catch
+any word that might fall from the general in reply; and a volunteer
+company, doing duty as a guard, pricked ruthlessly with their bayonets
+at any particularly quiet person among the throng. So Ernest, being of
+an unobtrusive character, was thrust quite into the background, where he
+could see no more of Old Blood-and-Thunder’s physiognomy than if it had
+been still blazing on the battlefield. To console himself, he turned
+towards the Great Stone Face, which, like a faithful and long-remembered
+friend, looked back and smiled upon him through the vista of the forest.
+Meantime, however, he could overhear the remarks of various individuals,
+who were comparing the features of the hero with the face on the distant
+mountainside.
+
+‘’T is the same face, to a hair!’ cried one man, cutting a caper for joy.
+
+‘Wonderfully like, that’s a fact!’ responded another.
+
+‘Like! why, I call it Old Blood-and-Thunder himself, in a monstrous
+looking-glass!’ cried a third.
+
+‘And why not? He’s the greatest man of this or any other age, beyond a
+doubt.’
+
+And then all three of the speakers gave a great shout, which
+communicated electricity to the crowd, and called forth a roar from a
+thousand voices, that went reverberating for miles among the mountains,
+until you might have supposed that the Great Stone Face had poured
+its thunder-breath into the cry. All these comments, and this vast
+enthusiasm, served the more to interest our friend; nor did he think of
+questioning that now, at length, the mountain-visage had found its human
+counterpart. It is true, Ernest had imagined that this long-looked-for
+personage would appear in the character of a man of peace, uttering
+wisdom, and doing good, and making people happy. But, taking an habitual
+breadth of view, with all his simplicity, he contended that providence
+should choose its own method of blessing mankind, and could conceive
+that this great end might be effected even by a warrior and a bloody
+sword, should inscrutable wisdom see fit to order matters SO.
+
+‘The general! the general!’ was now the cry. ‘Hush! silence! Old
+Blood-and-Thunder’s going to make a speech.’
+
+Even so; for, the cloth being removed, the general’s health had been
+drunk, amid shouts of applause, and he now stood upon his feet to thank
+the company. Ernest saw him. There he was, over the shoulders of the
+crowd, from the two glittering epaulets and embroidered collar upward,
+beneath the arch of green boughs with intertwined laurel, and the banner
+drooping as if to shade his brow! And there, too, visible in the same
+glance, through the vista of the forest, appeared the Great Stone Face!
+And was there, indeed, such a resemblance as the crowd had testified?
+Alas, Ernest could not recognize it! He beheld a war-worn and
+weather-beaten countenance, full of energy, and expressive of an iron
+will; but the gentle wisdom, the deep, broad, tender sympathies, were
+altogether wanting in Old Blood-and-Thunder’s visage; and even if the
+Great Stone Face had assumed his look of stern command, the milder
+traits would still have tempered it.
+
+‘This is not the man of prophecy,’ sighed Ernest to himself, as he made
+his way out of the throng. ‘And must the world wait longer yet?’
+
+The mists had congregated about the distant mountainside, and there were
+seen the grand and awful features of the Great Stone Face, awful but
+benignant, as if a mighty angel were sitting among the hills, and
+enrobing himself in a cloud-vesture of gold and purple. As he looked,
+Ernest could hardly believe but that a smile beamed over the whole
+visage, with a radiance still brightening, although without motion of
+the lips. It was probably the effect of the western sunshine, melting
+through the thinly diffused vapors that had swept between him and
+the object that he gazed at. But--as it always did--the aspect of his
+marvellous friend made Ernest as hopeful as if he had never hoped in
+vain.
+
+‘Fear not, Ernest,’ said his heart, even as if the Great Face were
+whispering him--‘fear not, Ernest; he will come.’
+
+More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. Ernest still dwelt in
+his native valley, and was now a man of middle age. By imperceptible
+degrees, he had become known among the people. Now, as heretofore, he
+labored for his bread, and was the same simple-hearted man that he had
+always been. But he had thought and felt so much, he had given so many
+of the best hours of his life to unworldly hopes for some great good to
+mankind, that it seemed as though he had been talking with the angels,
+and had imbibed a portion of their wisdom unawares. It was visible in
+the calm and well-considered beneficence of his daily life, the quiet
+stream of which had made a wide green margin all along its course. Not
+a day passed by, that the world was not the better because this man,
+humble as he was, had lived. He never stepped aside from his own path,
+yet would always reach a blessing to his neighbor. Almost involuntarily,
+too, he had become a preacher. The pure and high simplicity of his
+thought, which, as one of its manifestations, took shape in the good
+deeds that dropped silently from his hand, flowed also forth in speech.
+He uttered truths that wrought upon and moulded the lives of those who
+heard him. His auditors, it may be, never suspected that Ernest, their
+own neighbor and familiar friend, was more than an ordinary man; least
+of all did Ernest himself suspect it; but, inevitably as the murmur of
+a rivulet, came thoughts out of his mouth that no other human lips had
+spoken.
+
+When the people’s minds had had a little time to cool, they were ready
+enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between
+General Blood-and-Thunder’s truculent physiognomy and the benign visage
+on the mountain-side. But now, again, there were reports and many
+paragraphs in the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the Great
+Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain eminent
+statesman. He, like Mr. Gathergold and old Blood-and-Thunder, was a
+native of the valley, but had left it in his early days, and taken up
+the trades of law and politics. Instead of the rich man’s wealth and
+the warrior’s sword, he had but a tongue, and it was mightier than both
+together. So wonderfully eloquent was he, that whatever he might choose
+to say, his auditors had no choice but to believe him; wrong looked like
+right, and right like wrong; for when it pleased him, he could make a
+kind of illuminated fog with his mere breath, and obscure the natural
+daylight with it. His tongue, indeed, was a magic instrument: sometimes
+it rumbled like the thunder; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest
+music. It was the blast of war--the song of peace; and it seemed to have
+a heart in it, when there was no such matter. In good truth, he was a
+wondrous man; and when his tongue had acquired him all other imaginable
+success--when it had been heard in halls of state, and in the courts of
+princes and potentates--after it had made him known all over the world,
+even as a voice crying from shore to shore--it finally persuaded his
+countrymen to select him for the Presidency. Before this time--indeed,
+as soon as he began to grow celebrated--his admirers had found out the
+resemblance between him and the Great Stone Face; and so much were they
+struck by it, that throughout the country this distinguished gentleman
+was known by the name of Old Stony Phiz. The phrase was considered as
+giving a highly favorable aspect to his political prospects; for, as
+is likewise the case with the Popedom, nobody ever becomes President
+without taking a name other than his own.
+
+While his friends were doing their best to make him President, Old Stony
+Phiz, as he was called, set out on a visit to the valley where he was
+born. Of course, he had no other object than to shake hands with his
+fellow-citizens, and neither thought nor cared about any effect
+which his progress through the country might have upon the election.
+Magnificent preparations were made to receive the illustrious statesman;
+a cavalcade of horsemen set forth to meet him at the boundary line of
+the State, and all the people left their business and gathered along the
+wayside to see him pass. Among these was Ernest. Though more than once
+disappointed, as we have seen, he had such a hopeful and confiding
+nature, that he was always ready to believe in whatever seemed beautiful
+and good.
+
+He kept his heart continually open, and thus was sure to catch the
+blessing from on high when it should come. So now again, as buoyantly as
+ever, he went forth to behold the likeness of the Great Stone Face.
+
+The cavalcade came prancing along the road, with a great clattering of
+hoofs and a mighty cloud of dust, which rose up so dense and high that
+the visage of the mountainside was completely hidden from Ernest’s eyes.
+All the great men of the neighborhood were there on horseback; militia
+officers, in uniform; the member of Congress; the sheriff of the county;
+the editors of newspapers; and many a farmer, too, had mounted his
+patient steed, with his Sunday coat upon his back. It really was a very
+brilliant spectacle, especially as there were numerous banners flaunting
+over the cavalcade, on some of which were gorgeous portraits of the
+illustrious statesman and the Great Stone Face, smiling familiarly at
+one another, like two brothers. If the pictures were to be trusted, the
+mutual resemblance, it must be confessed, was marvellous. We must not
+forget to mention that there was a band of music, which made the echoes
+of the mountains ring and reverberate with the loud triumph of its
+strains; so that airy and soul-thrilling melodies broke out among all
+the heights and hollows, as if every nook of his native valley had found
+a voice, to welcome the distinguished guest. But the grandest effect was
+when the far-off mountain precipice flung back the music; for then the
+Great Stone Face itself seemed to be swelling the triumphant chorus, in
+acknowledgment, that, at length, the man of prophecy was come.
+
+All this while the people were throwing up their hats and shouting, with
+enthusiasm so contagious that the heart of Ernest kindled up, and he
+likewise threw up his hat, and shouted, as loudly as the loudest, ‘Huzza
+for the great man! Huzza for Old Stony Phiz!’ But as yet he had not seen
+him.
+
+‘Here he is, now!’ cried those who stood near Ernest. ‘There! There!
+Look at Old Stony Phiz and then at the Old Man of the Mountain, and see
+if they are not as like as two twin brothers!’
+
+In the midst of all this gallant array came an open barouche, drawn by
+four white horses; and in the barouche, with his massive head uncovered,
+sat the illustrious statesman, Old Stony Phiz himself.
+
+‘Confess it,’ said one of Ernest’s neighbors to him, ‘the Great Stone
+Face has met its match at last!’
+
+Now, it must be owned that, at his first glimpse of the countenance
+which was bowing and smiling from the barouche, Ernest did fancy that
+there was a resemblance between it and the old familiar face upon the
+mountainside. The brow, with its massive depth and loftiness, and all
+the other features, indeed, were boldly and strongly hewn, as if in
+emulation of a more than heroic, of a Titanic model. But the sublimity
+and stateliness, the grand expression of a divine sympathy, that
+illuminated the mountain visage and etherealized its ponderous granite
+substance into spirit, might here be sought in vain. Something had been
+originally left out, or had departed. And therefore the marvellously
+gifted statesman had always a weary gloom in the deep caverns of his
+eyes, as of a child that has outgrown its playthings or a man of mighty
+faculties and little aims, whose life, with all its high performances,
+was vague and empty, because no high purpose had endowed it with
+reality.
+
+Still, Ernest’s neighbor was thrusting his elbow into his side, and
+pressing him for an answer.
+
+‘Confess! confess! Is not he the very picture of your Old Man of the
+Mountain?’
+
+‘No!’ said Ernest, bluntly, ‘I see little or no likeness.’
+
+‘Then so much the worse for the Great Stone Face!’ answered his
+neighbor; and again he set up a shout for Old Stony Phiz.
+
+But Ernest turned away, melancholy, and almost despondent: for this
+was the saddest of his disappointments, to behold a man who might have
+fulfilled the prophecy, and had not willed to do so. Meantime, the
+cavalcade, the banners, the music, and the barouches swept past him,
+with the vociferous crowd in the rear, leaving the dust to settle down,
+and the Great Stone Face to be revealed again, with the grandeur that it
+had worn for untold centuries.
+
+‘Lo, here I am, Ernest!’ the benign lips seemed to say. ‘I have waited
+longer than thou, and am not yet weary. Fear not; the man will come.’
+
+The years hurried onward, treading in their haste on one another’s
+heels. And now they began to bring white hairs, and scatter them over
+the head of Ernest; they made reverend wrinkles across his forehead, and
+furrows in his cheeks. He was an aged man. But not in vain had he grown
+old: more than the white hairs on his head were the sage thoughts in his
+mind; his wrinkles and furrows were inscriptions that Time had graved,
+and in which he had written legends of wisdom that had been tested by
+the tenor of a life. And Ernest had ceased to be obscure. Unsought for,
+undesired, had come the fame which so many seek, and made him known in
+the great world, beyond the limits of the valley in which he had dwelt
+so quietly. College professors, and even the active men of cities, came
+from far to see and converse with Ernest; for the report had gone abroad
+that this simple husbandman had ideas unlike those of other men,
+not gained from books, but of a higher tone--a tranquil and familiar
+majesty, as if he had been talking with the angels as his daily friends.
+Whether it were sage, statesman, or philanthropist, Ernest received
+these visitors with the gentle sincerity that had characterized him from
+boyhood, and spoke freely with them of whatever came uppermost, or lay
+deepest in his heart or their own. While they talked together, his face
+would kindle, unawares, and shine upon them, as with a mild evening
+light. Pensive with the fulness of such discourse, his guests took leave
+and went their way; and passing up the valley, paused to look at the
+Great Stone Face, imagining that they had seen its likeness in a human
+countenance, but could not remember where.
+
+While Ernest had been growing up and growing old, a bountiful Providence
+had granted a new poet to this earth. He, likewise, was a native of the
+valley, but had spent the greater part of his life at a distance from
+that romantic region, pouring out his sweet music amid the bustle and
+din of cities. Often, however, did the mountains which had been familiar
+to him in his childhood lift their snowy peaks into the clear atmosphere
+of his poetry. Neither was the Great Stone Face forgotten, for the poet
+had celebrated it in an ode, which was grand enough to have been uttered
+by its own majestic lips. This man of genius, we may say, had come down
+from heaven with wonderful endowments. If he sang of a mountain, the
+eyes of all mankind beheld a mightier grandeur reposing on its breast,
+or soaring to its summit, than had before been seen there. If his theme
+were a lovely lake, a celestial smile had now been thrown over it, to
+gleam forever on its surface. If it were the vast old sea, even the deep
+immensity of its dread bosom seemed to swell the higher, as if moved by
+the emotions of the song. Thus the world assumed another and a better
+aspect from the hour that the poet blessed it with his happy eyes. The
+Creator had bestowed him, as the last best touch to his own handiwork.
+Creation was not finished till the poet came to interpret, and so
+complete it.
+
+The effect was no less high and beautiful, when his human brethren were
+the subject of his verse. The man or woman, sordid with the common dust
+of life, who crossed his daily path, and the little child who played in
+it, were glorified if they beheld him in his mood of poetic faith. He
+showed the golden links of the great chain that intertwined them with an
+angelic kindred; he brought out the hidden traits of a celestial birth
+that made them worthy of such kin. Some, indeed, there were, who thought
+to show the soundness of their judgment by affirming that all the beauty
+and dignity of the natural world existed only in the poet’s fancy.
+Let such men speak for themselves, who undoubtedly appear to have been
+spawned forth by Nature with a contemptuous bitterness; she plastered
+them up out of her refuse stuff, after all the swine were made. As
+respects all things else, the poet’s ideal was the truest truth.
+
+The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. He read them after his
+customary toil, seated on the bench before his cottage-door, where for
+such a length of time he had filled his repose with thought, by gazing
+at the Great Stone Face. And now as he read stanzas that caused the soul
+to thrill within him, he lifted his eyes to the vast countenance beaming
+on him so benignantly.
+
+‘O majestic friend,’ he murmured, addressing the Great Stone Face, ‘is
+not this man worthy to resemble thee?’
+
+The face seemed to smile, but answered not a word.
+
+Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt so far away, had not only
+heard of Ernest, but had meditated much upon his character, until he
+deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, whose untaught wisdom
+walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of his life.
+
+One summer morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and,
+in the decline of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great
+distance from Ernest’s cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly been
+the palace of Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, with
+his carpetbag on his arm, inquired at once where Ernest dwelt, and was
+resolved to be accepted as his guest.
+
+Approaching the door, he there found the good old man, holding a volume
+in his hand, which alternately he read, and then, with a finger between
+the leaves, looked lovingly at the Great Stone Face.
+
+‘Good evening,’ said the poet. ‘Can you give a traveller a night’s
+lodging?’
+
+‘Willingly,’ answered Ernest; and then he added, smiling, ‘Methinks I
+never saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger.’
+
+The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and Ernest talked
+together. Often had the poet held intercourse with the wittiest and
+the wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughts
+and feelings gushed up with such a natural feeling, and who made great
+truths so familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, as had
+been so often said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labor in
+the fields; angels seemed to have sat with him by the fireside;
+and, dwelling with angels as friend with friends, he had imbibed the
+sublimity of their ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and lowly charm
+of household words. So thought the poet. And Ernest, on the other hand,
+was moved and agitated by the living images which the poet flung out
+of his mind, and which peopled all the air about the cottage-door with
+shapes of beauty, both gay and pensive. The sympathies of these two men
+instructed them with a profounder sense than either could have attained
+alone. Their minds accorded into one strain, and made delightful
+music which neither of them could have claimed as all his own, nor
+distinguished his own share from the other’s. They led one another, as
+it were, into a high pavilion of their thoughts, so remote, and hitherto
+so dim, that they had never entered it before, and so beautiful that
+they desired to be there always.
+
+As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that the Great Stone Face
+was bending forward to listen too. He gazed earnestly into the poet’s
+glowing eyes.
+
+‘Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?’ he said.
+
+The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been reading.
+
+‘You have read these poems,’ said he. ‘You know me, then--for I wrote
+them.’
+
+Again, and still more earnestly than before, Ernest examined the poet’s
+features; then turned towards the Great Stone Face; then back, with an
+uncertain aspect, to his guest. But his countenance fell; he shook his
+head, and sighed.
+
+‘Wherefore are you sad?’ inquired the poet. ‘Because,’ replied Ernest,
+‘all through life I have awaited the fulfilment of a prophecy; and, when
+I read these poems, I hoped that it might be fulfilled in you.’
+
+‘You hoped,’ answered the poet, faintly smiling, ‘to find in me the
+likeness of the Great Stone Face. And you are disappointed, as formerly
+with Mr. Gathergold, and old Blood-and-Thunder, and Old Stony Phiz. Yes,
+Ernest, it is my doom.
+
+You must add my name to the illustrious three, and record another
+failure of your hopes. For--in shame and sadness do I speak it,
+Ernest--I am not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and majestic
+image.’
+
+‘And why?’ asked Ernest. He pointed to the volume. ‘Are not those
+thoughts divine?’
+
+‘They have a strain of the Divinity,’ replied the poet. ‘You can hear in
+them the far-off echo of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, has
+not corresponded with my thought. I have had grand dreams, but they have
+been only dreams, because I have lived--and that, too, by my own choice
+among poor and mean realities. Sometimes, even--shall I dare to say
+it?---I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the goodness, which
+my own works are said to have made more evident in nature and in human
+life. Why, then, pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst thou hope to
+find me, in yonder image of the divine?’
+
+The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears. So, likewise,
+were those of Ernest.
+
+At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest was
+to discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the open
+air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went
+along, proceeded to the spot. It was a small nook among the hills, with
+a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the
+pleasant foliage of many creeping plants that made a tapestry for the
+naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a
+small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure,
+there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with
+freedom for such gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought and
+genuine emotion. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a
+look of familiar kindness around upon his audience. They stood, or sat,
+or reclined upon the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing
+sunshine falling obliquely over them, and mingling its subdued
+cheerfulness with the solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, beneath and
+amid the boughs of which the golden rays were constrained to pass. In
+another direction was seen the Great Stone Face, with the same cheer,
+combined with the same solemnity, in its benignant aspect.
+
+Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in his heart
+and mind. His words had power, because they accorded with his thoughts;
+and his thoughts had reality and depth, because they harmonized with
+the life which he had always lived. It was not mere breath that this
+preacher uttered; they were the words of life, because a life of good
+deeds and holy love was melted into them. Pearls, pure and rich, had
+been dissolved into this precious draught. The poet, as he listened,
+felt that the being and character of Ernest were a nobler strain of
+poetry than he had ever written.
+
+His eyes glistening with tears, he gazed reverentially at the venerable
+man, and said within himself that never was there an aspect so worthy of
+a prophet and a sage as that mild, sweet, thoughtful countenance, with
+the glory of white hair diffused about it. At a distance, but distinctly
+to be seen, high up in the golden light of the setting sun, appeared
+the Great Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the white hairs
+around the brow of Ernest. Its look of grand beneficence seemed to
+embrace the world.
+
+At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter,
+the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued with
+benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his arms
+aloft and shouted--
+
+‘Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone
+Face!’
+
+Then all the people looked and saw that what the deep-sighted poet said
+was true. The prophecy was fulfilled. But Ernest, having finished what
+he had to say, took the poet’s arm, and walked slowly homeward, still
+hoping that some wiser and better man than himself would by and by
+appear, bearing a resemblance to the GREAT STONE FACE.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE AMBITIOUS GUEST
+
+One September night a family had gathered round their hearth, and piled
+it high with the driftwood of mountain streams, the dry cones of the
+pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing
+down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the
+room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a
+sober gladness; the children laughed; the eldest daughter was the image
+of Happiness at seventeen; and the aged grandmother who sat knitting in
+the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old. They had found
+the ‘herb, heart’s-ease,’ in the bleakest spot of all New England. (This
+family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills, where the wind
+was sharp throughout the year, and pitilessly cold in the winter--giving
+their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it descended on the
+valley of the Saco) They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one; for
+a mountain towered above their heads, so steep, that the stones would
+often rumble down its sides and startle them at midnight.
+
+The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all with
+mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause
+before their cottage--rattling the door, with a sound of wailing and
+lamentation, before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened
+them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family
+were glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some
+traveller, whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which
+heralded his approach, and wailed as he was entering, and went moaning
+away from the door.
+
+Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse
+with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery,
+through which the life-blood of internal commerce is continually
+throbbing between Maine, on one side, and the Green Mountains and the
+shores of the St. Lawrence, on the other. The stage-coach always drew up
+before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer, with no companion but
+his staff, paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness
+might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft
+of the mountain, or reach the first house in the valley. And here the
+teamster, on his way to Portland market, would put up for the night;
+and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime, and
+steal a kiss from the mountain maid at parting. It was one of those
+primitive taverns where the traveller pays only for food and lodging,
+but meets with a homely kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps
+were heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the
+whole family rose up, grandmother, children, and all, as if about to
+welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with
+theirs.
+
+The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the
+melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild and
+bleak road, at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he saw
+the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring forward to
+meet them all, from the old woman, who wiped a chair with her apron,
+to the little child that held out its arms to him. One glance and smile
+placed the stranger on a footing of innocent familiarity with the eldest
+daughter.
+
+‘Ah, this fire is the right thing!’ cried he; ‘especially when there is
+such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed; for the Notch is
+just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible
+blast in my face all the way from Bartlett.’
+
+‘Then you are going towards Vermont?’ said the master of the house, as
+he helped to take a light knapsack off the young man’s shoulders.
+
+‘Yes; to Burlington, and far enough beyond,’ replied he. ‘I meant to
+have been at Ethan Crawford’s tonight; but a pedestrian lingers along
+such a road as this. It is no matter; for, when I saw this good fire,
+and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose
+for me, and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you, and
+make myself at home.’
+
+The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when
+something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the
+steep side of the mountain, as with long and rapid strides, and taking
+such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice.
+The family held their breath, because they knew the sound, and their
+guest held his by instinct.
+
+‘The old mountain has thrown a stone at us, for fear we should forget
+him,’ said the landlord, recovering himself. ‘He sometimes nods his head
+and threatens to come down; but we are old neighbors, and agree together
+pretty well upon the whole. Besides we have a sure place of refuge hard
+by if he should be coming in good earnest.’
+
+Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear’s
+meat; and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed himself
+on a footing of kindness with the whole family, so that they talked as
+freely together as if he belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a
+proud, yet gentle spirit--haughty and reserved among the rich and great;
+but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door, and be like
+a brother or a son at the poor man’s fireside. In the household of
+the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading
+intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth, which they
+had gathered when they little thought of it from the mountain peaks and
+chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode.
+He had travelled far and alone; his whole life, indeed, had been a
+solitary path; for, with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept
+himself apart from those who might otherwise have been his companions.
+The family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness
+of unity among themselves, and separation from the world at large,
+which, in every domestic circle, should still keep a holy place where no
+stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled
+the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple
+mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free
+confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a common
+fate a closer tie than that of birth?
+
+The secret of the young man’s character was a high and abstracted
+ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not
+to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed
+to hope; and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty,
+that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his
+pathway--though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when
+posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present,
+they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner
+glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle
+to his tomb with none to recognize him.
+
+‘As yet,’ cried the stranger--his cheek glowing and his eye flashing
+with enthusiasm--‘as yet, I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from the
+earth tomorrow, none would know so much of me as you: that a nameless
+youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and opened his
+heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch by sunrise,
+and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, ‘Who was he? Whither did the
+wanderer go? But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny. Then,
+let Death come! I shall have built my monument!’
+
+There was a continual flow of natural emotion, gushing forth amid
+abstracted reverie, which enabled the family to understand this
+young man’s sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick
+sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had
+been betrayed.
+
+‘You laugh at me,’ said he, taking the eldest daughter’s hand, and
+laughing himself. ‘You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to
+freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington, only that people
+might spy at me from the country round about. And, truly, that would be
+a noble pedestal for a man’s statue!’
+
+‘It is better to sit here by this fire,’ answered the girl, blushing,
+‘and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us.’
+
+‘I suppose,’ Said her father, after a fit of musing, ‘there is
+something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been
+turned that way, I might have felt just the same. It is strange, wife,
+how his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty certain
+never to come to pass.’
+
+‘Perhaps they may,’ observed the wife. ‘Is the man thinking what he will
+do when he is a widower?’
+
+‘No, no!’ cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness. ‘When
+I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine, too. But I was wishing
+we had a good farm in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Littleton, or some
+other township round the White Mountains; but not where they could
+tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors and
+be called Squire, and sent to General Court for a term or two; for a
+plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer. And when I
+should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman, so as not to be
+long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you all
+crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble
+one--with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and something to
+let people know that I lived an honest man and died a Christian.’
+
+‘There now!’ exclaimed the stranger; ‘it is our nature to desire a
+monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious
+memory in the universal heart of man.’
+
+‘We’re in a strange way, tonight,’ said the wife, with tears in her
+eyes. ‘They say it’s a sign of something, when folks’ minds go a
+wandering so. Hark to the children!’
+
+They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in
+another room, but with an open door between, so that they could be heard
+talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the
+infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each other in wild
+wishes, and childish projects of what they would do when they came to
+be men and women. At length a little boy, instead of addressing his
+brothers and sisters, called out to his mother.
+
+‘I’ll tell you what I wish, mother,’ cried he. ‘I want you and father
+and grandma’m, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start right away,
+and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume!’
+
+Nobody could help laughing at the child’s notion of leaving a warm
+bed, and dragging them from a cheerful fire, to visit the basin of the
+Flume--a brook, which tumbles over the precipice, deep within the Notch.
+The boy had hardly spoken when a wagon rattled along the road, and
+stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three
+men, who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song,
+which resounded, in broken notes, between the cliffs, while the singers
+hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the
+night.
+
+‘Father,’ said the girl, ‘they are calling you by name.’
+
+But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was
+unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to
+patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door; and the
+lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, still
+singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily
+from the heart of the mountain.
+
+‘There, mother!’ cried the boy, again. ‘They’d have given us a ride to
+the Flume.’
+
+Again they laughed at the child’s pertinacious fancy for a night ramble.
+But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter’s spirit;
+she looked gravely into the fire, and drew a breath that was almost a
+sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little struggle to repress it.
+Then starting and blushing, she looked quickly round the circle, as if
+they had caught a glimpse into her bosom. The stranger asked what she
+had been thinking of.
+
+‘Nothing,’ answered she, with a downcast smile. ‘Only I felt lonesome
+just then.’
+
+‘Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people’s
+hearts,’ said he, half seriously. ‘Shall I tell the secrets of yours?
+For I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth,
+and complains of lonesomeness at her mother’s side. Shall I put these
+feelings into words?’
+
+‘They would not be a girl’s feelings any longer if they could be put
+into words,’ replied the mountain nymph, laughing, but avoiding his eye.
+
+All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their
+hearts, so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be
+matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his; and
+the proud, contemplative, yet kindly soul is oftenest captivated by
+simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching
+the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings of a
+maiden’s nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier
+sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain
+of the spirits of the blast, who in old Indian times had their dwelling
+among these mountains, and made their heights and recesses a sacred
+region. There was a wail along the road, as if a funeral were passing.
+To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine branches on their fire,
+till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again
+a scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about them
+fondly, and caressed them all. There were the little faces of the
+children, peeping from their bed apart, and here the father’s frame of
+strength, the mother’s subdued and careful mien, the high-browed youth,
+the budding girl, and the good old grandam, still knitting in the
+warmest place. The aged woman looked up from her task, and, with fingers
+ever busy, was the next to speak.
+
+‘Old folks have their notions,’ said she, ‘as well as young ones. You’ve
+been wishing and planning; and letting your heads run on one thing and
+another, till you’ve set my mind a wandering too. Now what should an old
+woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before she comes to
+her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till I tell you.’
+
+‘What is it, mother?’ cried the husband and wife at once.
+
+Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer
+round the fire, informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes
+some years before--a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and
+everything of a finer sort than she had worn since her wedding day. But
+this evening an old superstition had strangely recurred to her. It used
+to be said, in her younger days, that if anything were amiss with a
+corpse, if only the ruff were not smooth, or the cap did not set right,
+the corpse in the coffin and beneath the clods would strive to put up
+its cold hands and arrange it. The bare thought made her nervous.
+
+‘Don’t talk so, grandmother!’ said the girl, shuddering.
+
+‘Now’--continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet smiling
+strangely at her own folly--‘I want one of you, my children--when
+your mother is dressed and in the coffin---I want one of you to hold
+a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at
+myself, and see whether all’s right?’
+
+‘Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments,’ murmured the stranger
+youth. ‘I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking, and
+they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in the
+ocean--that wide and nameless sepulchre?’
+
+For a moment, the old woman’s ghastly conception so engrossed the minds
+of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar
+of a blast, had grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the fated
+group were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the
+foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound
+were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild
+glance, and remained an instant, pale, affrighted, without utterance, or
+power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all their
+lips.
+
+‘The Slide! The Slide!’
+
+The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable
+horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage, and
+sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot--where, in contemplation
+of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had
+quitted their security, and fled right into the pathway of destruction.
+Down came the whole side of the mountain, in a cataract of ruin.
+Just before it reached the house, the stream broke into two
+branches--shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole
+vicinity, blocked up the road, and annihilated everything in its
+dreadful course. Long ere the thunder of the great Slide had ceased to
+roar among the mountains, the mortal agony had been endured, and the
+victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found.
+
+The next morning, the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage
+chimney up the mountain side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on
+the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants
+had but gone forth to view the devastation of the Slide, and would
+shortly return, to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had
+left separate tokens, by which those who had known the family were made
+to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? (The story
+has been told far and wide, and Will forever be a legend of these
+mountains.) Poets have sung their fate.
+
+There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had
+been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the
+catastrophe of all its inmates. Others denied that there were sufficient
+grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth, with his
+dream of Earthly Immortality! His name and person utterly unknown; his
+history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his
+death and his existence equally a doubt! Whose was the agony of that
+death moment?
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT CARBUNCLE
+
+A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+
+(The Indian tradition, on which this somewhat extravagant tale is
+founded, is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought
+up in prose. Sullivan, in his History of Maine, written since the
+Revolution, remarks, that even then the existence of the Great Carbuncle
+was not entirely discredited.)
+
+AT nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the
+Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves, after
+a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come
+thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save
+one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for
+this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong
+enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude
+hut of branches, and kindling a great fire of shattered pines, that had
+drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank
+of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their number,
+perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies, by the
+absorbing spell of the pursuit, as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the
+sight of human faces, in the remote and solitary region whither they had
+ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the nearest
+settlement, while scant a mile above their heads was that black verge
+where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest trees, and
+either robe themselves in clouds or tower naked into the sky. The roar
+of the Amonoosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a
+solitary man had listened, while the mountain stream talked with the
+wind.
+
+The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings, and welcomed
+one another to the hut, where each man was the host, and all were the
+guests of the whole company. They spread their individual supplies of
+food on the flat surface of a rock, and partook of a general repast; at
+the close of which, a sentiment of good fellowship was perceptible among
+the party, though repressed by the idea, that the renewed search for the
+Great Carbuncle must make them strangers again in the morning. Seven men
+and one young woman, they warmed themselves together at the fire, which
+extended its bright wall along the whole front of their wigwam. As they
+observed the various and contrasted figures that made up the assemblage,
+each man looking like a caricature of himself, in the unsteady light
+that flickered over him, they came mutually to the conclusion, that
+an odder society had never met, in city or wilderness, on mountain or
+plain.
+
+The eldest of the group, a tall, lean, weather-beaten man, some sixty
+years of age, was clad in the skins of wild animals, whose fashion of
+dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf, and the
+bear, had long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those
+ill-fated mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom, in their early
+youth, the Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness, and became the
+passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew
+him as the Seeker and by no other name. As none could remember when he
+first took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of the Saco,
+that for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle, he had been
+condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time, still with
+the same feverish hopes at sunrise--the same despair at eve. Near this
+miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage, wearing a high-crowned
+hat, shaped somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond the sea, a
+Doctor Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried himself into a mummy by
+continually stooping over charcoal furnaces, and inhaling unwholesome
+fumes during his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It was told of
+him, whether truly or not, that, at the commencement of his studies, he
+had drained his body of all its richest blood, and wasted it, with other
+inestimable ingredients, in an unsuccessful experiment--and had never
+been a well man since. Another of the adventurers was Master bod
+Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selector Boston, and an elder of the
+famous Mr. Norton’s church. His enemies had a ridiculous story that
+Master Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole hour after prayer time,
+every morning and evening, in wallowing naked among an immense quantity
+of pine-tree shillings, which were the earliest silver coinage of
+Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall notice had no name that his
+companions knew of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that always
+contorted his thin visage, and by a prodigious pair of spectacles, which
+were supposed to deform and discolor the whole face of nature, to this
+gentleman’s perception. The fifth adventurer likewise lacked a name,
+which was the greater pity, as he appeared to be a poet. He was a
+bright-eyed man, but woefully pined away, which was no more than
+natural, if, as some people affirmed, his ordinary diet was fog, morning
+mist, and a slice of the densest cloud within his reach, sauced with
+moonshine, whenever he could get it. Certain it is, that the poetry
+which flowed from him had a smack of all these dainties. The sixth of
+the party was a young man of haughty mien, and sat somewhat apart from
+the rest, wearing his plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the
+fire glittered on the rich embroidery of his dress and gleamed intensely
+on the jewelled pommel of his sword. This was the Lord de Vere, who,
+when at home, was said to spend much of his time in the burial vault of
+his dead progenitors, rummaging their mouldy coffins in search of all
+the earthly pride and vainglory that was hidden among bones and dust;
+so that, besides his own share, he had the collected haughtiness of his
+whole line of ancestry.
+
+Lastly, there was a handsome youth in rustic garb, and by his side a
+blooming little person, in whom a delicate shade of maiden reserve was
+just melting into the rich glow of a young wife’s affection. Her name
+was Hannah, and her husband’s Matthew; two homely names, yet well enough
+adapted to the simple pair, who seemed strangely out of place among
+the whimsical fraternity whose wits had been set agog by the Great
+Carbuncle.
+
+Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire,
+sat this varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single
+object, that, of whatever else they began to speak, their closing words
+were sure to be illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related
+the circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a
+traveller’s tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country,
+and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as
+could only, be quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, so long ago as
+when the famous Captain Smith visited these coasts, had seen it blazing
+far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the intervening years till
+now that he took up the search. A third, being camped on a hunting
+expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains, awoke at
+midnight, and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so
+that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They spoke of the
+innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the spot, and of
+the singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success from all
+adventurers, though it might seem so easy to follow to its source a
+light that overpowered the moon, and almost matched the sun. It was
+observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other
+in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a scarcely
+hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one. As if to
+allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian traditions
+that a spirit kept watch about the gem, and bewildered those who sought
+it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher hills, or by
+calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it hung. But these
+tales were deemed unworthy of credit, all professing to believe that
+the search had been baffled by want of sagacity or perseverance in
+the adventurers, or such other causes as might naturally obstruct the
+passage to any given point among the intricacies of forest, valley, and
+mountain.
+
+In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles
+looked round upon the party, making each individual, in turn, the object
+of the sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance.
+
+‘So, fellow-pilgrims,’ said he, ‘here we are, seven wise men, and one
+fair damsel--who, doubtless, is as wise as any graybeard of the company:
+here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Methinks,
+now, it were not amiss that each of us declare what he proposes to do
+with the Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to clutch it.
+What says our friend in the bear skin? How mean you, good sir, to enjoy
+the prize which you have been seeking, the Lord knows how long, among
+the Crystal Hills?’
+
+‘How enjoy it!’ exclaimed the aged Seeker, bitterly. ‘I hope for no
+enjoyment from it; that folly has passed long ago! I keep up the search
+for this accursed stone because the vain ambition of my youth has become
+a fate upon me in old age. The pursuit alone is my strength--the energy
+of my soul--the warmth of my blood--and the pith and marrow of my bones!
+Were I to turn my back upon it I should fall down dead on the hither
+side of the Notch, which is the gateway of this mountain region. Yet not
+to have my wasted lifetime back again would I give up my hopes of the
+Great Carbuncle! Having found it, I shall bear it to a certain cavern
+that I wot of, and there, grasping it in my arms, lie down and die, and
+keep it buried with me forever.’
+
+‘O wretch, regardless of the interests of science!’ cried Doctor
+Cacaphodel, with philosophic indignation. ‘Thou art not worthy to
+behold, even from afar off, the lustre of this most precious gem that
+ever was concocted in the laboratory of Nature. Mine is the sole purpose
+for which a wise man may desire the possession of the Great Carbuncle.
+
+‘Immediately on obtaining it--for I have a presentiment, good people,
+that the prize is reserved to crown my scientific reputation--I shall
+return to Europe, and employ my remaining years in reducing it to
+its first elements. A portion of the stone will I grind to impalpable
+powder; other parts shall be dissolved in acids, or whatever solvents
+will act upon so admirable a composition; and the remainder I design
+to melt in the crucible, or set on fire with the blow-pipe. By these
+various methods I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow
+the result of my labors upon the world in a folio volume.’
+
+‘Excellent!’ quoth the man with the spectacles. ‘Nor need you hesitate,
+learned sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem; since
+the perusal of your folio may teach every mother’s son of us to concoct
+a Great Carbuncle of his own.’
+
+‘But, verily,’ said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, ‘for mine own part I object
+to the making of these counterfeits, as being calculated to reduce the
+marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, sirs, I have
+an interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my regular
+traffic, leaving my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and putting my
+credit to great hazard, and, furthermore, have put myself in peril of
+death or captivity by the accursed heathen savages--and all this without
+daring to ask the prayers of the congregation, because the quest for
+the Great Carbuncle is deemed little better than a traffic with the Evil
+One. Now think ye that I would have done this grievous wrong to my soul,
+body, reputation, and estate, without a reasonable chance of profit?’
+
+‘Not I, pious Master Pigsnort,’ said the man with the spectacles. ‘I
+never laid such a great folly to thy charge.’
+
+‘Truly, I hope not,’ said the merchant. ‘Now, as touching this Great
+Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it; but
+be it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will
+surely outvalue the Great Mogul’s best diamond, which he holds at an
+incalculable sum. Wherefore, I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on
+shipboard, and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or
+into Heathendom, if Providence should send me thither, and, in a word,
+dispose of the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of the earth,
+that he may place it among his crown jewels. If any of ye have a wiser
+plan, let him expound it.’
+
+‘That have I, thou sordid man!’ exclaimed the poet. ‘Dost thou desire
+nothing brighter than gold that thou wouldst transmute all this ethereal
+lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For myself, hiding
+the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my attic chamber, in
+one of the darksome alleys of London. There, night and day, will I
+gaze upon it; my soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be diffused
+throughout my intellectual powers, and gleam brightly in every line of
+poesy that I indite. Thus, long ages after I am gone, the splendor of
+the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name?’
+
+‘Well said, Master Poet!’ cried he of the spectacles. ‘Hide it under thy
+cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes, and make thee
+look like a jack-o’-lantern!’
+
+‘To think!’ ejaculated the Lord de Vere, rather to himself than
+his companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his
+intercourse--‘to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk
+of conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grub Street! Have not I
+resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament
+for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for
+ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor,
+the banners, and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping
+bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other adventurers sought
+the prize in vain but that I might win it, and make it a symbol of
+the glories of our lofty line? And never, on the diadem of the White
+Mountains, did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so honored as is
+reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres!’
+
+‘It is a noble thought,’ said the Cynic, with an obsequious sneer. ‘Yet,
+might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp,
+and would display the glories of your lordship’s progenitors more truly
+in the ancestral vault than in the castle hall.’
+
+‘Nay, forsooth,’ observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand
+in hand with his bride, ‘the gentleman has bethought himself of a
+profitable use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking it
+for a like purpose.’
+
+‘How, fellow!’ exclaimed his lordship, in surprise. ‘What castle hall
+hast thou to hang it in?’
+
+‘No castle,’ replied Matthew, ‘but as neat a cottage as any within sight
+of the Crystal Hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I, being
+wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the Great Carbuncle,
+because we shall need its light in the long winter evenings; and it will
+be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they visit us. It will
+shine through the house so that we may pick up a pin in any corner, and
+will set all the windows aglowing as if there were a great fire of pine
+knots in the chimney. And then how pleasant, when we awake in the night,
+to be able to see one another’s faces!’
+
+There was a general smile among the adventurers at the simplicity of the
+young couple’s project in regard to this wondrous and invaluable stone,
+with which the greatest monarch on earth might have been proud to adorn
+his palace. Especially the man with spectacles, who had sneered at all
+the company in turn, now twisted his visage into such an expression of
+ill-natured mirth, that Matthew asked him, rather peevishly, what he
+himself meant to do with the Great Carbuncle.
+
+‘The Great Carbuncle!’ answered the Cynic, with ineffable scorn. ‘Why,
+you blockhead, there is no such thing in rerum natura. I have come three
+thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every peak of these
+mountains, and poke my head into every chasm, for the sole purpose of
+demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit less an ass than
+thyself that the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug!’
+
+Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the
+adventurers to the Crystal Hills; but none so vain, so foolish, and so
+impious too, as that of the scoffer with the prodigious spectacles. He
+was one of those wretched and evil men whose yearnings are downward to
+the darkness, instead of heavenward, and who, could they but distinguish
+the lights which God hath kindled for us, would count the midnight gloom
+their chiefest glory. As the Cynic spoke, several of the party were
+startled by a gleam of red splendor, that showed the huge shapes of the
+surrounding mountains and the rock-bed of the turbulent river with an
+illumination unlike that of their fire on the trunks and black boughs
+of the forest trees. They listened for the roll of thunder, but heard
+nothing, and were glad that the tempest came not near them. The stars,
+those dial-points of heaven, now warned the adventurers to close their
+eyes on the blazing logs, and open them, in dreams, to the glow of the
+Great Carbuncle.
+
+The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest
+corner of the wigwam, and were separated from the rest of the party by
+a curtain of curiously-woven twigs, such as might have hung, in deep
+festoons, around the bridal-bower of Eve. The modest little wife had
+wrought this piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking. She
+and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped, and awoke from
+visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed light of one
+another’s eyes. They awoke at the same instant, and with one happy
+smile beaming over their two faces, which grew brighter with their
+consciousness of the reality of life and love. But no sooner did she
+recollect where they were, than the bride peeped through the interstices
+of the leafy curtain, and saw that the outer room of the hut was
+deserted.
+
+‘Up, dear Matthew!’ cried she, in haste. ‘The strange folk are all gone!
+Up, this very minute, or we shall loose the Great Carbuncle!’
+
+In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty prize
+which had lured them thither, that they had slept peacefully all night,
+and till the summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine; while
+the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish wakefulness, or
+dreamed of climbing precipices, and set off to realize their dreams
+with the earliest peep of dawn. But Matthew and Hannah, after their calm
+rest, were as light as two young deer, and merely stopped to say their
+prayers and wash themselves in a cold pool of the Amonoosuck, and
+then to taste a morsel of food, ere they turned their faces to the
+mountainside. It was a sweet emblem of conjugal affection, as they
+toiled up the difficult ascent, gathering strength from the mutual aid
+which they afforded. After several little accidents, such as a torn
+robe, a lost shoe, and the entanglement of Hannah’s hair in a bough,
+they reached the upper verge of the forest, and were now to pursue a
+more adventurous course. The innumerable trunks and heavy foliage of the
+trees had hitherto shut in their thoughts, which now shrank affrighted
+from the region of wind and cloud and naked rocks and desolate sunshine,
+that rose immeasurably above them. They gazed back at the obscure
+wilderness which they had traversed, and longed to be buried again
+in its depths rather than trust themselves to so vast and visible a
+solitude.
+
+‘Shall we go on?’ said Matthew, throwing his arm round Hannah’s waist,
+both to protect her and to comfort his heart by drawing her close to it.
+
+But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman’s love of jewels,
+and could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the
+world, in spite of the perils with which it must be won.
+
+‘Let us climb a little higher,’ whispered she, yet tremulously, as she
+turned her face upward to the lonely sky.
+
+‘Come, then,’ said Matthew, mustering his manly courage and drawing her
+along with him, for she became timid again the moment that he grew bold.
+
+And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now
+treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines,
+which, by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely
+reached three feet in altitude. Next, they came to masses and fragments
+of naked rock heaped confusedly together, like a cairn reared by giants
+in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing
+breathed, nothing grew; there was no life but what was concentrated in
+their two hearts; they had climbed so high that Nature herself seemed no
+longer to keep them company. She lingered beneath them, within the verge
+of the forest trees, and sent a farewell glance after her children as
+they strayed where her own green footprints had never been. But soon
+they were to be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark the mists began to
+gather below, casting black spots of shadow on the vast landscape, and
+sailing heavily to one centre, as if the loftiest mountain peak had
+summoned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally, the vapors welded
+themselves, as it were, into a mass, presenting the appearance of a
+pavement over which the wanderers might have trodden, but where they
+would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed earth which they had
+lost. And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth again, more
+intensely, alas! than, beneath a clouded sky, they had ever desired a
+glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief to their desolation when
+the mists, creeping gradually up the mountain, concealed its lonely
+peak, and thus annihilated, at least for them, the whole region
+of visible space. But they drew closely together, with a fond and
+melancholy gaze, dreading lest the universal cloud should snatch them
+from each other’s sight.
+
+Still, perhaps, they would have been resolute to climb as far and as
+high, between earth and heaven, as they could find foothold, if Hannah’s
+strength had not begun to fail, and with that, her courage also. Her
+breath grew short. She refused to burden her husband with her weight,
+but often tottered against his side, and recovered herself each time by
+a feebler effort. At last, she sank down on one of the rocky steps of
+the acclivity.
+
+‘We are lost, dear Matthew,’ said she, mournfully. ‘We shall never find
+our way to the earth again. And oh how happy we might have been in our
+cottage!’
+
+‘Dear heart! we will yet be happy there,’ answered Matthew. ‘Look! In
+this direction, the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist. By its aid, I
+can direct our course to the passage of the Notch. Let us go back, love,
+and dream no more of the Great Carbuncle!’
+
+‘The sun cannot be yonder,’ said Hannah, with despondence. ‘By this time
+it must be noon. If there could ever be any sunshine here, it would come
+from above our heads.’
+
+‘But look!’ repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone. ‘It is
+brightening every moment. If not sunshine, what can it be?’
+
+Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was breaking
+through the mist, and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which
+continually grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles were interfused
+with the gloom. Now, also, the cloud began to roll away from the
+mountain, while, as it heavily withdrew, one object after another
+started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight, with precisely the
+effect of a new creation, before the indistinctness of the old chaos
+had been completely swallowed up. As the process went on, they saw the
+gleaming of water close at their feet, and found themselves on the very
+border of a mountain lake, deep, bright, clear, and calmly beautiful,
+spreading from brim to brim of a basin that had been scooped out of
+the solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its surface. The pilgrims
+looked whence it should proceed, but closed their eyes with a thrill of
+awful admiration, to exclude the fervid splendor that glowed from the
+brow of a cliff impending over the enchanted lake. For the simple pair
+had reached that lake of mystery, and found the long-sought shrine of
+the Great Carbuncle!
+
+They threw their arms around each other, and trembled at their own
+success; for, as the legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick
+upon their memory, they felt themselves marked out by fate and the
+consciousness was fearful. Often, from childhood upward, they had seen
+it shining like a distant star. And now that star was throwing its
+intensest lustre on their hearts. They seemed changed to one another’s
+eyes, in the red brilliancy that flamed upon their cheeks, while it lent
+the same fire to the lake, the rocks, and sky, and to the mists which
+had rolled back before its power. But, with their next glance, they
+beheld an object that drew their attention even from the mighty stone.
+At the base of the cliff, directly beneath the Great Carbuncle, appeared
+the figure of a man, with his arms extended in the act of climbing, and
+his face turned upward, as if to drink the full gush of splendor. But he
+stirred not, no more than if changed to marble.
+
+‘It is the Seeker,’ whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her
+husband’s arm. ‘Matthew, he is dead.’
+
+‘The joy of success has killed him,’ replied Matthew, trembling
+violently. ‘Or, perhaps, the very light of the Great Carbuncle was
+death!’
+
+‘The Great Carbuncle,’ cried a peevish voice behind them. ‘The Great
+Humbug! If you have found it, prithee point it out to me.’
+
+They turned their heads, and there was the Cynic, with his prodigious
+spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at
+the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great
+Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if
+all the scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its
+radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet,
+as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be convinced
+that there was the least glimmer there.
+
+‘Where is your Great Humbug?’ he repeated. ‘I challenge you to make me
+see it!’
+
+‘There,’ said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and
+turning the Cynic round towards the illuminated cliff. ‘Take off those
+abominable spectacles, and you cannot help seeing it!’
+
+Now these colored spectacles probably darkened the Cynic’s sight, in at
+least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people gaze
+at an eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched them from
+his nose, and fixed a bold stare full upon the ruddy blaze of the
+Great Carbuncle. But scarcely had he encountered it, when, with a deep,
+shuddering groan, he dropped his head, and pressed both hands across his
+miserable eyes. Thenceforth there was, in very truth, no light of the
+Great Carbuncle, nor any other light on earth, nor light of heaven
+itself, for the poor Cynic. So long accustomed to View all objects
+through a medium that deprived them of every glimpse of brightness,
+a single flash of so glorious a phenomenon, striking upon his naked
+vision, had blinded him forever.
+
+‘Matthew,’ said Hannah, clinging to him, ‘let us go hence!’
+
+Matthew saw that she was faint, and kneeling down, supported her in his
+arms, while he threw some of the thrillingly cold water of the enchanted
+lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her, but could not renovate her
+courage.
+
+‘Yes, dearest!’ cried Matthew, pressing her tremulous form to his
+breast--‘we will go hence, and return to our humble cottage. The blessed
+sunshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through our window. We will
+kindle the cheerful glow of our hearth, at eventide, and be happy in its
+light. But never again will we desire more light than all the world may
+share with us.’
+
+‘No,’ said his bride, ‘for how could we live by day, or sleep by night,
+in this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle!’
+
+Out of the hollow of their hands, they drank each a draught from the
+lake, which presented them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly lip.
+Then, lending their guidance to the blinded Cynic, who uttered not a
+word, and even stifled his groans in his own most wretched heart, they
+began to descend the mountain. Yet, as they left the shore, till then
+untrodden, of the spirit’s lake, they threw a farewell glance towards
+the cliff, and beheld the vapors gathering in dense volumes, through
+which the gem burned duskily.
+
+As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, the legend goes
+on to tell, that the worshipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up the
+quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to betake himself
+again to his warehouse, near the town dock, in Boston. But, as he passed
+through the Notch of the mountains, a war party of Indians captured
+our unlucky merchant, and carried him to Montreal, there holding him
+in bondage, till, by the payment of a heavy ransom, he had woefully
+subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shillings. By his long absence,
+moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that, for the rest of his
+life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a sixpence worth
+of copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned to his laboratory
+with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he ground to powder,
+dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible, and burned with the
+blow-pipe, and published the result of his experiments in one of the
+heaviest folios of the day. And, for all these purposes, the gem itself
+could not have answered better than the granite. The poet, by a somewhat
+similar mistake, made prize of a great piece of ice, which he found in
+a sunless chasm of the mountains, and swore that it corresponded, in all
+points, with his idea of the Great Carbuncle. The critics say, that, if
+his poetry lacked the splendor of the gem, it retained all the coldness
+of the ice. The Lord de Vere went back to his ancestral hall, where
+he contented himself with a wax-lighted chandelier, and filled, in due
+course of time, another coffin in the ancestral vault. As the funeral
+torches gleamed within that dark receptacle, there was no need of the
+Great Carbuncle to show the vanity of earthly pomp.
+
+The Cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the world,
+a miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire of light,
+for the wilful blindness of his former life. The whole night long, he
+would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he turned
+his face eastward, at sunrise, as duly as a Persian idolater; he made
+a pilgrimage to Rome, to witness the magnificent illumination of St.
+Peter’s Church; and finally perished in the great fire of London, into
+the midst of which he had thrust himself, with the desperate idea of
+catching one feeble ray from the blaze that was kindling earth and
+heaven.
+
+Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years, and were fond of
+telling the legend of the Great Carbuncle. The tale, however, towards
+the close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full credence
+that had been accorded to it by those who remembered the ancient lustre
+of the gem. For it is affirmed that, from the hour when two mortals had
+shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel which would have
+dimmed all earthly things, its splendor waned. When other pilgrims
+reached the cliff, they found only an opaque stone, with particles of
+mica glittering on its surface. There is also a tradition that, as the
+youthful pair departed, the gem was loosened from the forehead of the
+cliff, and fell into the enchanted lake, and that, at noontide, the
+Seeker’s form may still be seen to bend over its quenchless gleam.
+
+Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing as of old,
+and say that they have caught its radiance, like a flash of summer
+lightning, far down the valley of the Saco. And be it owned that, many
+a mile from the Crystal Hills, I saw a wondrous light around their
+summits, and was lured, by the faith of poesy, to be the latest pilgrim
+of the GREAT CARBUNCLE.
+
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES FROM MEMORY
+
+THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+
+IT was now the middle of September. We had come since sunrise from
+Bartlett, passing up through the valley of the Saco, which extends
+between mountainous walls, sometimes with a steep ascent, but often as
+level as a church aisle. All that day and two preceding ones we had been
+loitering towards the heart of the White Mountains--those old crystal
+hills, whose mysterious brilliancy had gleamed upon our distant
+wanderings before we thought of visiting them. Height after height had
+risen and towered one above another till the clouds began to hang below
+the peaks. Down their slopes were the red pathways of the slides, those
+avalanches of earth, stones and trees, which descend into the hollows,
+leaving vestiges of their track hardly to be effaced by the vegetation
+of ages. We had mountains behind us and mountains on each side, and a
+group of mightier ones ahead. Still our road went up along the Saco,
+right towards the centre of that group, as if to climb above the clouds
+in its passage to the farther region.
+
+In old times the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the
+northern Indians coming down upon them from this mountain rampart
+through some defile known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a wondrous
+path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans, was travelling
+up the valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside as he passed, till
+at length a great mountain took its stand directly across his intended
+road. He tarries not for such an obstacle, but, rending it asunder
+a thousand feet from peak to base, discloses its treasures of hidden
+minerals, its sunless waters, all the secrets of the mountain’s inmost
+heart, with a mighty fracture of rugged precipices on each side. This
+is the Notch of the White Hills. Shame on me that I have attempted to
+describe it by so mean an image--feeling, as I do, that it is one of
+those symbolic scenes which lead the mind to the sentiment, though not
+to the conception, of Omnipotence.
+
+We had now reached a narrow passage, which showed almost the appearance
+of having been cut by human strength and artifice in the solid rock.
+There was a wall of granite on each side, high and precipitous,
+especially on our right, and so smooth that a few evergreens could
+hardly find foothold enough to grow there. This is the entrance, or, in
+the direction we were going, the extremity, of the romantic defile of
+the Notch. Before emerging from it, the rattling of wheels approached
+behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled out of the mountain, with seats on
+top and trunks behind, and a smart driver, in a drab greatcoat, touching
+the wheel horses with the whipstock and reining in the leaders. To my
+mind there was a sort of poetry in such an incident, hardly inferior
+to what would have accompanied the painted array of an Indian war party
+gliding forth from the same wild chasm. All the passengers, except a
+very fat lady on the back seat, had alighted. One was a mineralogist,
+a scientific, green-spectacled figure in black, bearing a heavy hammer,
+with which he did great damage to the precipices, and put the fragments
+in his pocket. Another was a well-dressed young man, who carried an
+opera glass set in gold, and seemed to be making a quotation from some
+of Byron’s rhapsodies on mountain scenery. There was also a trader,
+returning from Portland to the upper part of Vermont; and a fair young
+girl, with a very faint bloom like one of those pale and delicate
+flowers which sometimes occur among alpine cliffs.
+
+They disappeared, and we followed them, passing through a deep pine
+forest, which for some miles allowed us to see nothing but its own
+dismal shade. Towards nightfall we reached a level amphitheatre,
+surrounded by a great rampart of hills, which shut out the sunshine
+long before it left the external world. It was here that we obtained our
+first view, except at a distance, of the principal group of mountains.
+They are majestic, and even awful, when contemplated in a proper mood,
+yet, by their breadth of base and the long ridges which support them,
+give the idea of immense bulk rather than of towering height. Mount
+Washington, indeed, looked near to heaven: he was white with snow a mile
+downward, and had caught the only cloud that was sailing through the
+atmosphere to veil his head. Let us forget the other names of American
+statesmen that have been stamped upon these hills, but still call the
+loftiest Washington. Mountains are Earth’s undecaying monuments. They
+must stand while she endures, and never should be consecrated to the
+mere great men of their own age and country, but to the mighty
+ones alone, whose glory is universal, and whom all time will render
+illustrious.
+
+The air, not often sultry in this elevated region, nearly two thousand
+feet above the sea, was now sharp and cold, like that of a clear
+November evening in the lowlands. By morning, probably, there would be a
+frost, if not a snowfall, on the grass and rye, and an icy surface over
+the standing water. I was glad to perceive a prospect of comfortable
+quarters in a house which we were approaching, and of pleasant company
+in the guests who were assembled at the door.
+
+OUR EVENING PARTY AMONG THE MOUNTAINS We stood in front of a good
+substantial farmhouse, of old date in that wild country. A sign over the
+door denoted it to be the White Mountain Post Office--an establishment
+which distributes letters and newspapers to perhaps a score of persons,
+comprising the population of two or three townships among the hills. The
+broad and weighty antlers of a deer, ‘a stag of ten,’ were fastened at
+the corner of the house; a fox’s bushy tail was nailed beneath them; and
+a huge black paw lay on the ground, newly severed and still bleeding
+the trophy of a bear hunt. Among several persons collected about the
+doorsteps, the most remarkable was a sturdy mountaineer, of six feet two
+and corresponding bulk, with a heavy set of features, such as might be
+moulded on his own blacksmith’s anvil, but yet indicative of mother wit
+and rough humor. As we appeared, he uplifted a tin trumpet, four or five
+feet long, and blew a tremendous blast, either in honor of our arrival
+or to awaken an echo from the opposite hill.
+
+Ethan Crawford’s guests were of such a motley description as to form
+quite a picturesque group, seldom seen together except at some place
+like this, at once the pleasure house of fashionable tourists and the
+homely inn of country travellers. Among the company at the door were
+the mineralogist and the owner of the gold opera glass whom we had
+encountered in the Notch; two Georgian gentlemen, who had chilled their
+southern blood that morning on the top of Mount Washington; a physician
+and his wife from Conway; a trader of Burlington, and an old squire of
+the Green Mountains; and two young married couples, all the way from
+Massachusetts, on the matrimonial jaunt, Besides these strangers, the
+rugged county of Coos, in which we were, was represented by half a dozen
+wood-cutters, who had slain a bear in the forest and smitten off his
+paw.
+
+I had joined the party, and had a moment’s leisure to examine them
+before the echo of Ethan’s blast returned from the hill. Not one, but
+many echoes had caught up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted its
+complicated threads, and found a thousand aerial harmonies in one stern
+trumpet tone. It was a distinct yet distant and dreamlike symphony
+of melodious instruments, as if an airy band had been hidden on the
+hillside and made faint music at the summons. No subsequent trial
+produced so clear, delicate, and spiritual a concert as the first. A
+field-piece was then discharged from the top of a neighboring hill,
+and gave birth to one long reverberation, which ran round the circle
+of mountains in an unbroken chain of sound and rolled away without a
+separate echo. After these experiments, the cold atmosphere drove us all
+into the house, with the keenest appetites for supper.
+
+It did one’s heart good to see the great fires that were kindled in
+the parlor and bar-room, especially the latter, where the fireplace was
+built of rough stone, and might have contained the trunk of an old tree
+for a backlog. A man keeps a comfortable hearth when his own forest is
+at his very door. In the parlor, when the evening was fairly set in, we
+held our hands before our eyes to shield them from the ruddy glow,
+and began a pleasant variety of conversation. The mineralogist and the
+physician talked about the invigorating qualities of the mountain air,
+and its excellent effect on Ethan Crawford’s father, an old man of
+seventy-five, with the unbroken frame of middle life. The two brides and
+the doctor’s wife held a whispered discussion, which, by their frequent
+titterings and a blush or two, seemed to have reference to the trials or
+enjoyments of the matrimonial state. The bridegrooms sat together in a
+corner, rigidly silent, like Quakers whom the spirit moveth not, being
+still in the odd predicament of bashfulness towards their own young
+wives. The Green Mountain squire chose me for his companion, and
+described the difficulties he had met with half a century ago in
+travelling from the Connecticut River through the Notch to Conway, now
+a single day’s journey, though it had cost him eighteen. The Georgians
+held the album between them, and favored us with the few specimens
+of its contents which they considered ridiculous enough to be worth
+hearing. One extract met with deserved applause. It was a ‘Sonnet to the
+Snow on Mount Washington,’ and had been contributed that very afternoon,
+bearing a signature of great distinction in magazines and annals. The
+lines were elegant and full of fancy, but too remote from familiar
+sentiment, and cold as their subject, resembling those curious specimens
+of crystallized vapor which I observed next day on the mountain top. The
+poet was understood to be the young gentleman of the gold opera glass,
+who heard our laudatory remarks with the composure of a veteran.
+
+Such was our party, and such their ways of amusement. But on a winter
+evening another set of guests assembled at the hearth where these summer
+travellers were now sitting. I once had it in contemplation to spend a
+month hereabouts, in sleighing time, for the sake of studying the yeomen
+of New England, who then elbow each other through the Notch by hundreds,
+on their way to Portland. There could be no better school for such a
+place than Ethan Crawford’s inn. Let the student go thither in December,
+sit down with the teamsters at their meals, share their evening
+merriment, and repose with them at night when every bed has its three
+occupants, and parlor, barroom, and kitchen are strewn with slumberers
+around the fire. Then let him rise before daylight, button his
+greatcoat, muffle up his ears, and stride with the departing caravan
+a mile or two, to see how sturdily they make head against the blast. A
+treasure of characteristic traits will repay all inconveniences, even
+should a frozen nose be of the number.
+
+The conversation of our party soon became more animated and sincere,
+and we recounted some traditions of the Indians, who believed that the
+father and mother of their race were saved from a deluge by ascending
+the peak of Mount Washington. The children of that pair have been
+overwhelmed, and found no such refuge. In the mythology of the savage,
+these mountains were afterwards considered sacred and inaccessible,
+full of unearthly wonders, illuminated at lofty heights by the blaze
+of precious stones, and inhabited by deities, who sometimes shrouded
+themselves in the snowstorm and came down on the lower world. There
+are few legends more poetical than that of the’ Great Carbuncle’ of the
+White Mountains. The belief was communicated to the English settlers,
+and is hardly yet extinct, that a gem, of such immense size as to be
+seen shining miles away, hangs from a rock over a clear, deep lake,
+high up among the hills. They who had once beheld its splendor were
+inthralled with an unutterable yearning to possess it. But a spirit
+guarded that inestimable jewel, and bewildered the adventurer with a
+dark mist from the enchanted lake. Thus life was worn away in the vain
+search for an unearthly treasure, till at length the deluded one went up
+the mountain, still sanguine as in youth, but returned no more. On this
+theme methinks I could frame a tale with a deep moral.
+
+The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to these superstitions
+of the red men, though we spoke of them in the centre of the haunted
+region. The habits and sentiments of that departed people were too
+distinct from those of their successors to find much real sympathy. It
+has often been a matter of regret to me that I was shut out from the
+most peculiar field of American fiction by an inability to see any
+romance, or poetry, or grandeur, or beauty in the Indian character, at
+least till such traits were pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian
+story. Yet no writer can be more secure of a permanent place in our
+literature than the biographer of the Indian chiefs. His subject, as
+referring to tribes which have mostly vanished from the earth, gives
+him a right to be placed on a classic shelf, apart from the merits which
+will sustain him there.
+
+I made inquiries whether, in his researches about these parts, our
+mineralogist had found the three ‘Silver Hills’ which an Indian sachem
+sold to an Englishman nearly two hundred years ago, and the treasure of
+which the posterity of the purchaser have been looking for ever since.
+But the man of science had ransacked every hill along the Saco, and knew
+nothing of these prodigious piles of wealth. By this time, as usual with
+men on the eve of great adventure, we had prolonged our session deep
+into the night, considering how early we were to set out on our six
+miles’ ride to the foot of Mount Washington. There was now a general
+breaking up. I scrutinized the faces of the two bridegrooms, and saw but
+little probability of their leaving the bosom of earthly bliss, in the
+first week of the honeymoon and at the frosty hour of three, to climb
+above the clouds; nor when I felt how sharp the wind was as it rushed
+through a broken pane and eddied between the chinks of my unplastered
+chamber, did I anticipate much alacrity on my own part, though we were
+to seek for the ‘Great Carbuncle.’
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s The Great Stone Face, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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diff --git a/1916-0.zip b/1916-0.zip
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains, by Nathaniel
+      Hawthorne
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Stone Face, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Great Stone Face
+       And Other Tales Of The White Mountains
+
+Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+Release Date: February 25, 2006 [EBook #1916]
+Last Updated: December 15, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT STONE FACE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE GREAT STONE FACE <br /> <br /> AND OTHER TALES OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Nathaniel Hawthorne <br /> <br /> <br /> 1882
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_INTR"> INTRODUCTION </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE GREAT STONE FACE </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE AMBITIOUS GUEST </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THE GREAT CARBUNCLE </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> SKETCHES FROM MEMORY </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_INTR" id="link2H_INTR">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      INTRODUCTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THE first three numbers in this collection are tales of the White Hills in
+      New Hampshire. The passages from Sketches from Memory show that Hawthorne
+      had visited the mountains in one of his occasional rambles from home, but
+      there are no entries in his Note Books which give accounts of such a
+      visit. There is, however, among these notes the following interesting
+      paragraph, written in 1840 and clearly foreshadowing The Great Stone Face:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The semblance of a human face to be formed on the side of a mountain, or
+      in the fracture of a small stone, by a lusus naturae [freak of nature].
+      The face is an object of curiosity for years or centuries, and by and by a
+      boy is born whose features gradually assume the aspect of that portrait.
+      At some critical juncture the resemblance is found to be perfect. A
+      prophecy may be connected.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not impossible that this conceit occurred to Hawthorne before he had
+      himself seen the Old Man of the Mountain, or the Profile, in the Franconia
+      Notch which is generally associated in the minds of readers with The Great
+      Stone Face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In The Ambitious Guest he has made use of the incident still told to
+      travellers through the Notch, of the destruction of the Willey family in
+      August, 1826. The house occupied by the family was on the slope of a
+      mountain, and after a long drought there was a terrible tempest which not
+      only raised the river to a great height but loosened the surface of the
+      mountain so that a great landslide took place. The house was in the track
+      of the slide, and the family rushed out of doors. Had they remained within
+      they would have been safe, for a ledge above the house parted the
+      avalanche so that it was diverted into two paths and swept past the house
+      on either side. Mr. and Mrs. Willey, their five children, and two hired
+      men were crushed under the weight of earth, rocks, and trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Sketches from Memory Hawthorne gives an intimation of the tale
+      which he might write and did afterward write of The Great Carbuncle. The
+      paper is interesting as showing what were the actual experiences out of
+      which he formed his imaginative stories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE GREAT STONE FACE and Other Tales Of The White Mountains
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE GREAT STONE FACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One afternoon, when the sun was going down, a mother and her little boy
+      sat at the door of their cottage, talking about the Great Stone Face. They
+      had but to lift their eyes, and there it was plainly to be seen, though
+      miles away, with the sunshine brightening all its features. And what was
+      the Great Stone Face? Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains, there
+      was a valley so spacious that it contained many thousand inhabitants. Some
+      of these good people dwelt in log-huts, with the black forest all around
+      them, on the steep and difficult hillsides. Others had their homes in
+      comfortable farm-houses, and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes
+      or level surfaces of the valley. Others, again, were congregated into
+      populous villages, where some wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down from
+      its birthplace in the upper mountain region, had been caught and tamed by
+      human cunning, and compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories.
+      The inhabitants of this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many modes
+      of life. But all of them, grown people and children, had a kind of
+      familiarity with the Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift of
+      distinguishing this grand natural phenomenon more perfectly than many of
+      their neighbors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature in her mood of majestie
+      playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a mountain by some
+      immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as, when
+      viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of the
+      human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan, had
+      sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad arch of
+      the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its long bridge;
+      and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have rolled
+      their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other. True it is,
+      that if the spectator approached too near, he lost the outline of the
+      gigantic visage, and could discern only a heap of ponderous and gigantic
+      rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon another. Retracing his steps,
+      however, the wondrous features would again be seen; and the farther he
+      withdrew from them, the more like a human face, with all its original
+      divinity intact, did they appear; until, as it grew dim in the distance,
+      with the clouds and glorified vapor of the mountains clustering about it,
+      the Great Stone Face seemed positively to be alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a happy lot for children to grow up to manhood or womanhood with
+      the Great Stone Face before their eyes, for all the features were noble,
+      and the expression was at once grand and sweet, as if it were the glow of
+      a vast, warm heart, that embraced all mankind in its affections, and had
+      room for more. It was an education only to look at it. According to the
+      belief of many people, the valley owed much of its fertility to this
+      benign aspect that was continually beaming over it, illuminating the
+      clouds, and infusing its tenderness into the sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we began with saying, a mother and her little boy sat at their
+      cottage-door, gazing at the Great Stone Face, and talking about it. The
+      child&rsquo;s name was Ernest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mother,&rsquo; said he, while the Titanic visage miled on him, &lsquo;I wish that it
+      could speak, for it looks so very kindly that its voice must needs be
+      pleasant. If I were to See a man with such a face, I should love him
+      dearly.&rsquo; &lsquo;If an old prophecy should come to pass,&rsquo; answered his mother,
+      &lsquo;we may see a man, some time for other, with exactly such a face as that.&rsquo; 
+      &lsquo;What prophecy do you mean, dear mother?&rsquo; eagerly inquired Ernest. &lsquo;Pray
+      tell me all about it!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So his mother told him a story that her own mother had told to her, when
+      she herself was younger than little Ernest; a story, not of things that
+      were past, but of what was yet to come; a story, nevertheless, so very
+      old, that even the Indians, who formerly inhabited this valley, had heard
+      it from their forefathers, to whom, as they affirmed, it had been murmured
+      by the mountain streams, and whispered by the wind among the tree-tops.
+      The purport was, that, at some future day, a child should be born
+      hereabouts, who was destined to become the greatest and noblest personage
+      of his time, and whose countenance, in manhood, should bear an exact
+      resemblance to the Great Stone Face. Not a few old-fashioned people, and
+      young ones likewise, in the ardor of their hopes, still cherished an
+      enduring faith in this old prophecy. But others, who had seen more of the
+      world, had watched and waited till they were weary, and had beheld no man
+      with such a face, nor any man that proved to be much greater or nobler
+      than his neighbors, concluded it to be nothing but an idle tale. At all
+      events, the great man of the prophecy had not yet appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O mother, dear mother!&rsquo; cried Ernest, clapping his hands above his head,
+      &lsquo;I do hope that I shall live to see him!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother was an affectionate and thoughtful woman, and felt that it was
+      wisest not to discourage the generous hopes of her little boy. So she only
+      said to him, &lsquo;Perhaps you may.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Ernest never forgot the story that his mother told him. It was always
+      in his mind, whenever he looked upon the Great Stone Face. He spent his
+      childhood in the log-cottage where he was born, and was dutiful to his
+      mother, and helpful to her in many things, assisting her much with his
+      little hands, and more with his loving heart. In this manner, from a happy
+      yet often pensive child, he grew up to be a mild, quiet, unobtrusive boy,
+      and sun-browned with labor in the fields, but with more intelligence
+      brightening his aspect than is seen in many lads who have been taught at
+      famous schools. Yet Ernest had had no teacher, save only that the Great
+      Stone Face became one to him. When the toil of the day was over, he would
+      gaze at it for hours, until he began to imagine that those vast features
+      recognized him, and gave him a smile of kindness and encouragement,
+      responsive to his own look of veneration. We must not take upon us to
+      affirm that this was a mistake, although the Face may have looked no more
+      kindly at Ernest than at all the world besides. But the secret was that
+      the boy&rsquo;s tender and confiding simplicity discerned what other people
+      could not see; and thus the love, which was meant for all, became his
+      peculiar portion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About this time there went a rumor throughout the valley, that the great
+      man, foretold from ages long ago, who was to bear a resemblance to the
+      Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems that, many years before,
+      a young man had migrated from the valley and settled at a distant seaport,
+      where, after getting together a little money, he had set up as a
+      shopkeeper. His name but I could never learn whether it was his real one,
+      or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success in life&mdash;was
+      Gathergold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being shrewd and active, and endowed by Providence with that inscrutable
+      faculty which develops itself in what the world calls luck, he became an
+      exceedingly rich merchant, and owner of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomed
+      ships. All the countries of the globe appeared to join hands for the mere
+      purpose of adding heap after heap to the mountainous accumulation of this
+      one man&rsquo;s wealth. The cold regions of the north, almost within the gloom
+      and shadow of the Arctic Circle, sent him their tribute in the shape of
+      furs; hot Africa sifted for him the golden sands of her rivers, and
+      gathered up the ivory tusks of her great elephants out of the forests; the
+      east came bringing him the rich shawls, and spices, and teas, and the
+      effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity of large pearls. The
+      ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales,
+      that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the
+      original commodity what it might, it was gold within his grasp. It might
+      be said of him, as of Midas, in the fable, that whatever he touched with
+      his finger immediately glistened, and grew yellow, and was changed at once
+      into sterling metal, or, which suited him still better, into piles of
+      coin. And, when Mr. Gathergold had become so very rich that it would have
+      taken him a hundred years only to count his wealth, he bethought himself
+      of his native valley, and resolved to go back thither, and end his days
+      where he was born. With this purpose in view, he sent a skilful architect
+      to build him such a palace as should be fit for a man of his vast wealth
+      to live in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I have said above, it had already been rumored in the valley that Mr.
+      Gathergold had turned out to be the prophetic personage so long and vainly
+      looked for, and that his visage was the perfect and undeniable similitude
+      of the Great Stone Face. People were the more ready to believe that this
+      must needs be the fact, when they beheld the splendid edifice that rose,
+      as if by enchantment, on the site of his father&rsquo;s old weather-beaten
+      farmhouse. The exterior was of marble, so dazzlingly white that it seemed
+      as though the whole structure might melt away in the sunshine, like those
+      humbler ones which Mr. Gathergold, in his young play-days, before his
+      fingers were gifted with the touch of transmutation, had been accustomed
+      to build of snow. It had a richly ornamented portico supported by tall
+      pillars, beneath which was a lofty door, studded with silver knobs, and
+      made of a kind of variegated wood that had been brought from beyond the
+      sea. The windows, from the floor to the ceiling of each stately apartment,
+      were composed, respectively of but one enormous pane of glass, so
+      transparently pure that it was said to be a finer medium than even the
+      vacant atmosphere. Hardly anybody had been permitted to see the interior
+      of this palace; but it was reported, and with good semblance of truth, to
+      be far more gorgeous than the outside, insomuch that whatever was iron or
+      brass in other houses was silver or gold in this; and Mr. Gathergold&rsquo;s
+      bedchamber, especially, made such a glittering appearance that no ordinary
+      man would have been able to close his eyes there. But, on the other hand,
+      Mr. Gathergold was now so inured to wealth, that perhaps he could not have
+      closed his eyes unless where the gleam of it was certain to find its way
+      beneath his eyelids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In due time, the mansion was finished; next came the upholsterers, with
+      magnificent furniture; then, a whole troop of black and white servants,
+      the haringers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majestic person, was
+      expected to arrive at sunset. Our friend Ernest, meanwhile, had been
+      deeply stirred by the idea that the great man, the noble man, the man of
+      prophecy, after so many ages of delay, was at length to be made manifest
+      to his native valley. He knew, boy as he was, that there were a thousand
+      ways in which Mr. Gathergold, with his vast wealth, might transform
+      himself into an angel of beneficence, and assume a control over human
+      affairs as wide and benignant as the smile of the Great Stone Face. Full
+      of faith and hope, Ernest doubted not that what the people said was true,
+      and that now he was to behold the living likeness of those wondrous
+      features on the mountainside. While the boy was still gazing up the
+      valley, and fancying, as he always did, that the Great Stone Face returned
+      his gaze and looked kindly at him, the rumbling of wheels was heard,
+      approaching swiftly along the winding road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here he comes!&rsquo; cried a group of people who were assembled to witness the
+      arrival. &lsquo;Here comes the great Mr. Gathergold!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A carriage, drawn by four horses, dashed round the turn of the road.
+      Within it, thrust partly out of the window, appeared the physiognomy of
+      the old man, with a skin as yellow as if his own Midas-hand had transmuted
+      it. He had a low forehead, small, sharp eyes, puckered about with
+      innumerable wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he made still thinner by
+      pressing them forcibly together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The very image or the Great Stone Face!&rsquo; shouted the people. &lsquo;Sure
+      enough, the old prophecy is true; and here we have the great man come, at
+      last!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, what greatly perplexed Ernest, they seemed actually to believe that
+      here was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced
+      to be an old beggar woman and two little beggar-children, stragglers from
+      some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held out their
+      hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously beseeching
+      charity. A yellow claw the very same that had dawed together so much
+      wealth&mdash;poked itself out of the coach-window, and dropt some copper
+      coins upon the ground; so that, though the great man&rsquo;s name seems to have
+      been Gathergold, he might just as suitably have been nicknamed
+      Scattercopper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest shout, and evidently
+      with as much good faith as ever, the people bellowed &lsquo;He is the very image
+      of the Great Stone Face!&rsquo; But Ernest turned sadly from the wrinkled
+      shrewdness of that sordid visage, and gazed up the valley, where, amid a
+      gathering mist, gilded by the last sunbeams, he could still distinguish
+      those glorious features which had impressed themselves into his soul.
+      Their aspect cheered him. What did the benign lips seem to say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He will come! Fear not, Ernest; the man will come!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a boy. He had grown to be a
+      young man now. He attracted little notice from the other inhabitants of
+      the valley; for they saw nothing remarkable in his way of life, save that,
+      when the labor of the day was over, he still loved to go apart and gaze
+      and meditate upon the Great Stone Face. According to their idea of the
+      matter, it was a folly, indeed, but pardonable, inasmuch as Ernest was
+      industrious, kind, and neighborly, and neglected no duty for the sake of
+      indulging this idle habit. They knew not that the Great Stone Face had
+      become a teacher to him, and that the sentiment which was expressed in it
+      would enlarge the young man&rsquo;s heart, and fill it with wider and deeper
+      sympathies than other hearts. They knew not that thence would come a
+      better wisdom than could be learned from books, and a better life than
+      could be moulded on the defaced example of other human lives. Neither did
+      Ernest know that the thoughts and affections which came to him so
+      naturally, in the fields and at the fireside, and wherever he communed
+      with himself, were of a higher tone than those which all men shared with
+      him. A simple soul&mdash;simple as when his mother first taught him the
+      old prophecy&mdash;he beheld the marvellous features beaming adown the
+      valley, and still wondered that their human counterpart was so long in
+      making his appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and buried; and the oddest part
+      of the matter was, that his wealth, which was the body and spirit of his
+      existence, had disappeared before his death, leaving nothing of him but a
+      living skeleton, covered over with a wrinkled, yellow skin. Since the
+      melting away of his gold, it had been very generally conceded that there
+      was no such striking resemblance, after all, betwixt the ignoble features
+      of the ruined merchant and that majestic face upon the mountainside. So
+      the people ceased to honor him during his lifetime, and quietly consigned
+      him to forgetfulness after his decease. Once in a while, it is true, his
+      memory was brought up in connection with the magnificent palace which he
+      had built, and which had long ago been turned into a hotel for the
+      accommodation of strangers, multitudes of whom came, every summer, to
+      visit that famous natural curiosity, the Great Stone Face. Thus, Mr.
+      Gathergold being discredited and thrown into the shade, the man of
+      prophecy was yet to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It so happened that a native-born son of the valley, many years before,
+      had enlisted as a soldier, and, after a great deal of hard fighting, had
+      now become an illustrious commander. Whatever he may be called in history,
+      he was known in camps and on the battlefield under the nickname of Old
+      Blood-and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now infirm with age and
+      wounds, and weary of the turmoil of a military life, and of the roll of
+      the drum and the clangor of the trumpet, that had so long been ringing in
+      his ears, had lately signified a purpose of returning to his native
+      valley, hoping to find repose where he remembered to have left it. The
+      inhabitants, his old neighbors and their grown-up children, were resolved
+      to welcome the renowned warrior with a salute of cannon and a public
+      dinner; and all the more enthusiastically, it being affirmed that now, at
+      last, the likeness of the Great Stone Face had actually appeared. An
+      aid-de-camp of Old Blood-and-Thunder, travelling through the valley, was
+      said to have been struck with the resemblance. Moreover the schoolmates
+      and early acquaintances of the general were ready to testify, on oath,
+      that, to the best of their recollection, the aforesaid general had been
+      exceedingly like the majestic image, even when a boy, only that the idea
+      had never occurred to them at that period. Great, therefore, was the
+      excitement throughout the valley; and many people, who had never once
+      thought of glancing at the Great Stone Face for years before, now spent
+      their time in gazing at it, for the sake of knowing exactly how General
+      Blood-and-Thunder looked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day of the great festival, Ernest, with all the other people of the
+      valley, left their work, and proceeded to the spot where the sylvan
+      banquet was prepared. As he approached, the loud voice of the Rev. Dr.
+      Battleblast was heard, beseeching a blessing on the good things set before
+      them, and on the distinguished friend of peace in whose honor they were
+      assembled. The tables were arranged in a cleared space of the woods, shut
+      in by the surrounding trees, except where a vista opened eastward, and
+      afforded a distant view of the Great Stone Face. Over the general&rsquo;s chair,
+      which was a relic from the home of Washington, there was an arch of
+      verdant boughs, with the laurel profusely intermixed, and surmounted by
+      his country&rsquo;s banner, beneath which he had won his victories. Our friend
+      Ernest raised himself on his tiptoes, in hopes to get a glimpse of the
+      celebrated guest; but there was a mighty crowd about the tables anxious to
+      hear the toasts and speeches, and to catch any word that might fall from
+      the general in reply; and a volunteer company, doing duty as a guard,
+      pricked ruthlessly with their bayonets at any particularly quiet person
+      among the throng. So Ernest, being of an unobtrusive character, was thrust
+      quite into the background, where he could see no more of Old
+      Blood-and-Thunder&rsquo;s physiognomy than if it had been still blazing on the
+      battlefield. To console himself, he turned towards the Great Stone Face,
+      which, like a faithful and long-remembered friend, looked back and smiled
+      upon him through the vista of the forest. Meantime, however, he could
+      overhear the remarks of various individuals, who were comparing the
+      features of the hero with the face on the distant mountainside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;T is the same face, to a hair!&rsquo; cried one man, cutting a caper for joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wonderfully like, that&rsquo;s a fact!&rsquo; responded another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Like! why, I call it Old Blood-and-Thunder himself, in a monstrous
+      looking-glass!&rsquo; cried a third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And why not? He&rsquo;s the greatest man of this or any other age, beyond a
+      doubt.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then all three of the speakers gave a great shout, which communicated
+      electricity to the crowd, and called forth a roar from a thousand voices,
+      that went reverberating for miles among the mountains, until you might
+      have supposed that the Great Stone Face had poured its thunder-breath into
+      the cry. All these comments, and this vast enthusiasm, served the more to
+      interest our friend; nor did he think of questioning that now, at length,
+      the mountain-visage had found its human counterpart. It is true, Ernest
+      had imagined that this long-looked-for personage would appear in the
+      character of a man of peace, uttering wisdom, and doing good, and making
+      people happy. But, taking an habitual breadth of view, with all his
+      simplicity, he contended that providence should choose its own method of
+      blessing mankind, and could conceive that this great end might be effected
+      even by a warrior and a bloody sword, should inscrutable wisdom see fit to
+      order matters SO.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The general! the general!&rsquo; was now the cry. &lsquo;Hush! silence! Old
+      Blood-and-Thunder&rsquo;s going to make a speech.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even so; for, the cloth being removed, the general&rsquo;s health had been
+      drunk, amid shouts of applause, and he now stood upon his feet to thank
+      the company. Ernest saw him. There he was, over the shoulders of the
+      crowd, from the two glittering epaulets and embroidered collar upward,
+      beneath the arch of green boughs with intertwined laurel, and the banner
+      drooping as if to shade his brow! And there, too, visible in the same
+      glance, through the vista of the forest, appeared the Great Stone Face!
+      And was there, indeed, such a resemblance as the crowd had testified?
+      Alas, Ernest could not recognize it! He beheld a war-worn and
+      weather-beaten countenance, full of energy, and expressive of an iron
+      will; but the gentle wisdom, the deep, broad, tender sympathies, were
+      altogether wanting in Old Blood-and-Thunder&rsquo;s visage; and even if the
+      Great Stone Face had assumed his look of stern command, the milder traits
+      would still have tempered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is not the man of prophecy,&rsquo; sighed Ernest to himself, as he made
+      his way out of the throng. &lsquo;And must the world wait longer yet?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mists had congregated about the distant mountainside, and there were
+      seen the grand and awful features of the Great Stone Face, awful but
+      benignant, as if a mighty angel were sitting among the hills, and enrobing
+      himself in a cloud-vesture of gold and purple. As he looked, Ernest could
+      hardly believe but that a smile beamed over the whole visage, with a
+      radiance still brightening, although without motion of the lips. It was
+      probably the effect of the western sunshine, melting through the thinly
+      diffused vapors that had swept between him and the object that he gazed
+      at. But&mdash;as it always did&mdash;the aspect of his marvellous friend
+      made Ernest as hopeful as if he had never hoped in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fear not, Ernest,&rsquo; said his heart, even as if the Great Face were
+      whispering him&mdash;&lsquo;fear not, Ernest; he will come.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. Ernest still dwelt in his
+      native valley, and was now a man of middle age. By imperceptible degrees,
+      he had become known among the people. Now, as heretofore, he labored for
+      his bread, and was the same simple-hearted man that he had always been.
+      But he had thought and felt so much, he had given so many of the best
+      hours of his life to unworldly hopes for some great good to mankind, that
+      it seemed as though he had been talking with the angels, and had imbibed a
+      portion of their wisdom unawares. It was visible in the calm and
+      well-considered beneficence of his daily life, the quiet stream of which
+      had made a wide green margin all along its course. Not a day passed by,
+      that the world was not the better because this man, humble as he was, had
+      lived. He never stepped aside from his own path, yet would always reach a
+      blessing to his neighbor. Almost involuntarily, too, he had become a
+      preacher. The pure and high simplicity of his thought, which, as one of
+      its manifestations, took shape in the good deeds that dropped silently
+      from his hand, flowed also forth in speech. He uttered truths that wrought
+      upon and moulded the lives of those who heard him. His auditors, it may
+      be, never suspected that Ernest, their own neighbor and familiar friend,
+      was more than an ordinary man; least of all did Ernest himself suspect it;
+      but, inevitably as the murmur of a rivulet, came thoughts out of his mouth
+      that no other human lips had spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the people&rsquo;s minds had had a little time to cool, they were ready
+      enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between
+      General Blood-and-Thunder&rsquo;s truculent physiognomy and the benign visage on
+      the mountain-side. But now, again, there were reports and many paragraphs
+      in the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the Great Stone Face had
+      appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain eminent statesman. He, like
+      Mr. Gathergold and old Blood-and-Thunder, was a native of the valley, but
+      had left it in his early days, and taken up the trades of law and
+      politics. Instead of the rich man&rsquo;s wealth and the warrior&rsquo;s sword, he had
+      but a tongue, and it was mightier than both together. So wonderfully
+      eloquent was he, that whatever he might choose to say, his auditors had no
+      choice but to believe him; wrong looked like right, and right like wrong;
+      for when it pleased him, he could make a kind of illuminated fog with his
+      mere breath, and obscure the natural daylight with it. His tongue, indeed,
+      was a magic instrument: sometimes it rumbled like the thunder; sometimes
+      it warbled like the sweetest music. It was the blast of war&mdash;the song
+      of peace; and it seemed to have a heart in it, when there was no such
+      matter. In good truth, he was a wondrous man; and when his tongue had
+      acquired him all other imaginable success&mdash;when it had been heard in
+      halls of state, and in the courts of princes and potentates&mdash;after it
+      had made him known all over the world, even as a voice crying from shore
+      to shore&mdash;it finally persuaded his countrymen to select him for the
+      Presidency. Before this time&mdash;indeed, as soon as he began to grow
+      celebrated&mdash;his admirers had found out the resemblance between him
+      and the Great Stone Face; and so much were they struck by it, that
+      throughout the country this distinguished gentleman was known by the name
+      of Old Stony Phiz. The phrase was considered as giving a highly favorable
+      aspect to his political prospects; for, as is likewise the case with the
+      Popedom, nobody ever becomes President without taking a name other than
+      his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While his friends were doing their best to make him President, Old Stony
+      Phiz, as he was called, set out on a visit to the valley where he was
+      born. Of course, he had no other object than to shake hands with his
+      fellow-citizens, and neither thought nor cared about any effect which his
+      progress through the country might have upon the election. Magnificent
+      preparations were made to receive the illustrious statesman; a cavalcade
+      of horsemen set forth to meet him at the boundary line of the State, and
+      all the people left their business and gathered along the wayside to see
+      him pass. Among these was Ernest. Though more than once disappointed, as
+      we have seen, he had such a hopeful and confiding nature, that he was
+      always ready to believe in whatever seemed beautiful and good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept his heart continually open, and thus was sure to catch the
+      blessing from on high when it should come. So now again, as buoyantly as
+      ever, he went forth to behold the likeness of the Great Stone Face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cavalcade came prancing along the road, with a great clattering of
+      hoofs and a mighty cloud of dust, which rose up so dense and high that the
+      visage of the mountainside was completely hidden from Ernest&rsquo;s eyes. All
+      the great men of the neighborhood were there on horseback; militia
+      officers, in uniform; the member of Congress; the sheriff of the county;
+      the editors of newspapers; and many a farmer, too, had mounted his patient
+      steed, with his Sunday coat upon his back. It really was a very brilliant
+      spectacle, especially as there were numerous banners flaunting over the
+      cavalcade, on some of which were gorgeous portraits of the illustrious
+      statesman and the Great Stone Face, smiling familiarly at one another,
+      like two brothers. If the pictures were to be trusted, the mutual
+      resemblance, it must be confessed, was marvellous. We must not forget to
+      mention that there was a band of music, which made the echoes of the
+      mountains ring and reverberate with the loud triumph of its strains; so
+      that airy and soul-thrilling melodies broke out among all the heights and
+      hollows, as if every nook of his native valley had found a voice, to
+      welcome the distinguished guest. But the grandest effect was when the
+      far-off mountain precipice flung back the music; for then the Great Stone
+      Face itself seemed to be swelling the triumphant chorus, in
+      acknowledgment, that, at length, the man of prophecy was come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this while the people were throwing up their hats and shouting, with
+      enthusiasm so contagious that the heart of Ernest kindled up, and he
+      likewise threw up his hat, and shouted, as loudly as the loudest, &lsquo;Huzza
+      for the great man! Huzza for Old Stony Phiz!&rsquo; But as yet he had not seen
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here he is, now!&rsquo; cried those who stood near Ernest. &lsquo;There! There! Look
+      at Old Stony Phiz and then at the Old Man of the Mountain, and see if they
+      are not as like as two twin brothers!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of all this gallant array came an open barouche, drawn by
+      four white horses; and in the barouche, with his massive head uncovered,
+      sat the illustrious statesman, Old Stony Phiz himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Confess it,&rsquo; said one of Ernest&rsquo;s neighbors to him, &lsquo;the Great Stone Face
+      has met its match at last!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, it must be owned that, at his first glimpse of the countenance which
+      was bowing and smiling from the barouche, Ernest did fancy that there was
+      a resemblance between it and the old familiar face upon the mountainside.
+      The brow, with its massive depth and loftiness, and all the other
+      features, indeed, were boldly and strongly hewn, as if in emulation of a
+      more than heroic, of a Titanic model. But the sublimity and stateliness,
+      the grand expression of a divine sympathy, that illuminated the mountain
+      visage and etherealized its ponderous granite substance into spirit, might
+      here be sought in vain. Something had been originally left out, or had
+      departed. And therefore the marvellously gifted statesman had always a
+      weary gloom in the deep caverns of his eyes, as of a child that has
+      outgrown its playthings or a man of mighty faculties and little aims,
+      whose life, with all its high performances, was vague and empty, because
+      no high purpose had endowed it with reality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, Ernest&rsquo;s neighbor was thrusting his elbow into his side, and
+      pressing him for an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Confess! confess! Is not he the very picture of your Old Man of the
+      Mountain?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No!&rsquo; said Ernest, bluntly, &lsquo;I see little or no likeness.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then so much the worse for the Great Stone Face!&rsquo; answered his neighbor;
+      and again he set up a shout for Old Stony Phiz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ernest turned away, melancholy, and almost despondent: for this was
+      the saddest of his disappointments, to behold a man who might have
+      fulfilled the prophecy, and had not willed to do so. Meantime, the
+      cavalcade, the banners, the music, and the barouches swept past him, with
+      the vociferous crowd in the rear, leaving the dust to settle down, and the
+      Great Stone Face to be revealed again, with the grandeur that it had worn
+      for untold centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lo, here I am, Ernest!&rsquo; the benign lips seemed to say. &lsquo;I have waited
+      longer than thou, and am not yet weary. Fear not; the man will come.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The years hurried onward, treading in their haste on one another&rsquo;s heels.
+      And now they began to bring white hairs, and scatter them over the head of
+      Ernest; they made reverend wrinkles across his forehead, and furrows in
+      his cheeks. He was an aged man. But not in vain had he grown old: more
+      than the white hairs on his head were the sage thoughts in his mind; his
+      wrinkles and furrows were inscriptions that Time had graved, and in which
+      he had written legends of wisdom that had been tested by the tenor of a
+      life. And Ernest had ceased to be obscure. Unsought for, undesired, had
+      come the fame which so many seek, and made him known in the great world,
+      beyond the limits of the valley in which he had dwelt so quietly. College
+      professors, and even the active men of cities, came from far to see and
+      converse with Ernest; for the report had gone abroad that this simple
+      husbandman had ideas unlike those of other men, not gained from books, but
+      of a higher tone&mdash;a tranquil and familiar majesty, as if he had been
+      talking with the angels as his daily friends. Whether it were sage,
+      statesman, or philanthropist, Ernest received these visitors with the
+      gentle sincerity that had characterized him from boyhood, and spoke freely
+      with them of whatever came uppermost, or lay deepest in his heart or their
+      own. While they talked together, his face would kindle, unawares, and
+      shine upon them, as with a mild evening light. Pensive with the fulness of
+      such discourse, his guests took leave and went their way; and passing up
+      the valley, paused to look at the Great Stone Face, imagining that they
+      had seen its likeness in a human countenance, but could not remember
+      where.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Ernest had been growing up and growing old, a bountiful Providence
+      had granted a new poet to this earth. He, likewise, was a native of the
+      valley, but had spent the greater part of his life at a distance from that
+      romantic region, pouring out his sweet music amid the bustle and din of
+      cities. Often, however, did the mountains which had been familiar to him
+      in his childhood lift their snowy peaks into the clear atmosphere of his
+      poetry. Neither was the Great Stone Face forgotten, for the poet had
+      celebrated it in an ode, which was grand enough to have been uttered by
+      its own majestic lips. This man of genius, we may say, had come down from
+      heaven with wonderful endowments. If he sang of a mountain, the eyes of
+      all mankind beheld a mightier grandeur reposing on its breast, or soaring
+      to its summit, than had before been seen there. If his theme were a lovely
+      lake, a celestial smile had now been thrown over it, to gleam forever on
+      its surface. If it were the vast old sea, even the deep immensity of its
+      dread bosom seemed to swell the higher, as if moved by the emotions of the
+      song. Thus the world assumed another and a better aspect from the hour
+      that the poet blessed it with his happy eyes. The Creator had bestowed
+      him, as the last best touch to his own handiwork. Creation was not
+      finished till the poet came to interpret, and so complete it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect was no less high and beautiful, when his human brethren were
+      the subject of his verse. The man or woman, sordid with the common dust of
+      life, who crossed his daily path, and the little child who played in it,
+      were glorified if they beheld him in his mood of poetic faith. He showed
+      the golden links of the great chain that intertwined them with an angelic
+      kindred; he brought out the hidden traits of a celestial birth that made
+      them worthy of such kin. Some, indeed, there were, who thought to show the
+      soundness of their judgment by affirming that all the beauty and dignity
+      of the natural world existed only in the poet&rsquo;s fancy. Let such men speak
+      for themselves, who undoubtedly appear to have been spawned forth by
+      Nature with a contemptuous bitterness; she plastered them up out of her
+      refuse stuff, after all the swine were made. As respects all things else,
+      the poet&rsquo;s ideal was the truest truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. He read them after his
+      customary toil, seated on the bench before his cottage-door, where for
+      such a length of time he had filled his repose with thought, by gazing at
+      the Great Stone Face. And now as he read stanzas that caused the soul to
+      thrill within him, he lifted his eyes to the vast countenance beaming on
+      him so benignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O majestic friend,&rsquo; he murmured, addressing the Great Stone Face, &lsquo;is not
+      this man worthy to resemble thee?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The face seemed to smile, but answered not a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt so far away, had not only
+      heard of Ernest, but had meditated much upon his character, until he
+      deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, whose untaught wisdom
+      walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One summer morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and, in
+      the decline of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great distance
+      from Ernest&rsquo;s cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly been the palace
+      of Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, with his carpetbag on
+      his arm, inquired at once where Ernest dwelt, and was resolved to be
+      accepted as his guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Approaching the door, he there found the good old man, holding a volume in
+      his hand, which alternately he read, and then, with a finger between the
+      leaves, looked lovingly at the Great Stone Face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good evening,&rsquo; said the poet. &lsquo;Can you give a traveller a night&rsquo;s
+      lodging?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Willingly,&rsquo; answered Ernest; and then he added, smiling, &lsquo;Methinks I
+      never saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and Ernest talked
+      together. Often had the poet held intercourse with the wittiest and the
+      wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughts and
+      feelings gushed up with such a natural feeling, and who made great truths
+      so familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, as had been so often
+      said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labor in the fields; angels
+      seemed to have sat with him by the fireside; and, dwelling with angels as
+      friend with friends, he had imbibed the sublimity of their ideas, and
+      imbued it with the sweet and lowly charm of household words. So thought
+      the poet. And Ernest, on the other hand, was moved and agitated by the
+      living images which the poet flung out of his mind, and which peopled all
+      the air about the cottage-door with shapes of beauty, both gay and
+      pensive. The sympathies of these two men instructed them with a profounder
+      sense than either could have attained alone. Their minds accorded into one
+      strain, and made delightful music which neither of them could have claimed
+      as all his own, nor distinguished his own share from the other&rsquo;s. They led
+      one another, as it were, into a high pavilion of their thoughts, so
+      remote, and hitherto so dim, that they had never entered it before, and so
+      beautiful that they desired to be there always.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that the Great Stone Face was
+      bending forward to listen too. He gazed earnestly into the poet&rsquo;s glowing
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?&rsquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You have read these poems,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;You know me, then&mdash;for I wrote
+      them.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, and still more earnestly than before, Ernest examined the poet&rsquo;s
+      features; then turned towards the Great Stone Face; then back, with an
+      uncertain aspect, to his guest. But his countenance fell; he shook his
+      head, and sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wherefore are you sad?&rsquo; inquired the poet. &lsquo;Because,&rsquo; replied Ernest,
+      &lsquo;all through life I have awaited the fulfilment of a prophecy; and, when I
+      read these poems, I hoped that it might be fulfilled in you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You hoped,&rsquo; answered the poet, faintly smiling, &lsquo;to find in me the
+      likeness of the Great Stone Face. And you are disappointed, as formerly
+      with Mr. Gathergold, and old Blood-and-Thunder, and Old Stony Phiz. Yes,
+      Ernest, it is my doom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You must add my name to the illustrious three, and record another failure
+      of your hopes. For&mdash;in shame and sadness do I speak it, Ernest&mdash;I
+      am not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and majestic image.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And why?&rsquo; asked Ernest. He pointed to the volume. &lsquo;Are not those thoughts
+      divine?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They have a strain of the Divinity,&rsquo; replied the poet. &lsquo;You can hear in
+      them the far-off echo of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, has
+      not corresponded with my thought. I have had grand dreams, but they have
+      been only dreams, because I have lived&mdash;and that, too, by my own
+      choice among poor and mean realities. Sometimes, even&mdash;shall I dare
+      to say it?&mdash;-I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the
+      goodness, which my own works are said to have made more evident in nature
+      and in human life. Why, then, pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst
+      thou hope to find me, in yonder image of the divine?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears. So, likewise, were
+      those of Ernest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest was to
+      discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the open air.
+      He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went along,
+      proceeded to the spot. It was a small nook among the hills, with a gray
+      precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the pleasant
+      foliage of many creeping plants that made a tapestry for the naked rock,
+      by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a small elevation
+      above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a
+      niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with freedom for such
+      gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought and genuine emotion.
+      Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a look of familiar
+      kindness around upon his audience. They stood, or sat, or reclined upon
+      the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing sunshine falling
+      obliquely over them, and mingling its subdued cheerfulness with the
+      solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, beneath and amid the boughs of
+      which the golden rays were constrained to pass. In another direction was
+      seen the Great Stone Face, with the same cheer, combined with the same
+      solemnity, in its benignant aspect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in his heart and
+      mind. His words had power, because they accorded with his thoughts; and
+      his thoughts had reality and depth, because they harmonized with the life
+      which he had always lived. It was not mere breath that this preacher
+      uttered; they were the words of life, because a life of good deeds and
+      holy love was melted into them. Pearls, pure and rich, had been dissolved
+      into this precious draught. The poet, as he listened, felt that the being
+      and character of Ernest were a nobler strain of poetry than he had ever
+      written.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes glistening with tears, he gazed reverentially at the venerable
+      man, and said within himself that never was there an aspect so worthy of a
+      prophet and a sage as that mild, sweet, thoughtful countenance, with the
+      glory of white hair diffused about it. At a distance, but distinctly to be
+      seen, high up in the golden light of the setting sun, appeared the Great
+      Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the white hairs around the
+      brow of Ernest. Its look of grand beneficence seemed to embrace the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter,
+      the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued with
+      benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his arms
+      aloft and shouted&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone Face!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then all the people looked and saw that what the deep-sighted poet said
+      was true. The prophecy was fulfilled. But Ernest, having finished what he
+      had to say, took the poet&rsquo;s arm, and walked slowly homeward, still hoping
+      that some wiser and better man than himself would by and by appear,
+      bearing a resemblance to the GREAT STONE FACE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE AMBITIOUS GUEST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One September night a family had gathered round their hearth, and piled it
+      high with the driftwood of mountain streams, the dry cones of the pine,
+      and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing down the
+      precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the room with
+      its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a sober gladness;
+      the children laughed; the eldest daughter was the image of Happiness at
+      seventeen; and the aged grandmother who sat knitting in the warmest place,
+      was the image of Happiness grown old. They had found the &lsquo;herb,
+      heart&rsquo;s-ease,&rsquo; in the bleakest spot of all New England. (This family were
+      situated in the Notch of the White Hills, where the wind was sharp
+      throughout the year, and pitilessly cold in the winter&mdash;giving their
+      cottage all its fresh inclemency before it descended on the valley of the
+      Saco) They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one; for a mountain
+      towered above their heads, so steep, that the stones would often rumble
+      down its sides and startle them at midnight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all with
+      mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause before
+      their cottage&mdash;rattling the door, with a sound of wailing and
+      lamentation, before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened
+      them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family were
+      glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some
+      traveller, whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which
+      heralded his approach, and wailed as he was entering, and went moaning
+      away from the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse
+      with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery, through
+      which the life-blood of internal commerce is continually throbbing between
+      Maine, on one side, and the Green Mountains and the shores of the St.
+      Lawrence, on the other. The stage-coach always drew up before the door of
+      the cottage. The wayfarer, with no companion but his staff, paused here to
+      exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome
+      him ere he could pass through the cleft of the mountain, or reach the
+      first house in the valley. And here the teamster, on his way to Portland
+      market, would put up for the night; and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour
+      beyond the usual bedtime, and steal a kiss from the mountain maid at
+      parting. It was one of those primitive taverns where the traveller pays
+      only for food and lodging, but meets with a homely kindness beyond all
+      price. When the footsteps were heard, therefore, between the outer door
+      and the inner one, the whole family rose up, grandmother, children, and
+      all, as if about to welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate
+      was linked with theirs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the melancholy
+      expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild and bleak road,
+      at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he saw the kindly
+      warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring forward to meet them
+      all, from the old woman, who wiped a chair with her apron, to the little
+      child that held out its arms to him. One glance and smile placed the
+      stranger on a footing of innocent familiarity with the eldest daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah, this fire is the right thing!&rsquo; cried he; &lsquo;especially when there is
+      such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed; for the Notch is
+      just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible
+      blast in my face all the way from Bartlett.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then you are going towards Vermont?&rsquo; said the master of the house, as he
+      helped to take a light knapsack off the young man&rsquo;s shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes; to Burlington, and far enough beyond,&rsquo; replied he. &lsquo;I meant to have
+      been at Ethan Crawford&rsquo;s tonight; but a pedestrian lingers along such a
+      road as this. It is no matter; for, when I saw this good fire, and all
+      your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose for me,
+      and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you, and make
+      myself at home.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when
+      something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the steep
+      side of the mountain, as with long and rapid strides, and taking such a
+      leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice. The
+      family held their breath, because they knew the sound, and their guest
+      held his by instinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The old mountain has thrown a stone at us, for fear we should forget
+      him,&rsquo; said the landlord, recovering himself. &lsquo;He sometimes nods his head
+      and threatens to come down; but we are old neighbors, and agree together
+      pretty well upon the whole. Besides we have a sure place of refuge hard by
+      if he should be coming in good earnest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear&rsquo;s
+      meat; and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed himself on a
+      footing of kindness with the whole family, so that they talked as freely
+      together as if he belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a proud, yet
+      gentle spirit&mdash;haughty and reserved among the rich and great; but
+      ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door, and be like a
+      brother or a son at the poor man&rsquo;s fireside. In the household of the Notch
+      he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading intelligence of
+      New England, and a poetry of native growth, which they had gathered when
+      they little thought of it from the mountain peaks and chasms, and at the
+      very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode. He had travelled far
+      and alone; his whole life, indeed, had been a solitary path; for, with the
+      lofty caution of his nature, he had kept himself apart from those who
+      might otherwise have been his companions. The family, too, though so kind
+      and hospitable, had that consciousness of unity among themselves, and
+      separation from the world at large, which, in every domestic circle,
+      should still keep a holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this
+      evening a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to
+      pour out his heart before the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to
+      answer him with the same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is
+      not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The secret of the young man&rsquo;s character was a high and abstracted
+      ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not to
+      be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to hope;
+      and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty, that, obscurely as he
+      journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway&mdash;though not,
+      perhaps, while he was treading it. But when posterity should gaze back
+      into the gloom of what was now the present, they would trace the
+      brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner glories faded, and
+      confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle to his tomb with none
+      to recognize him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;As yet,&rsquo; cried the stranger&mdash;his cheek glowing and his eye flashing
+      with enthusiasm&mdash;&lsquo;as yet, I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from
+      the earth tomorrow, none would know so much of me as you: that a nameless
+      youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and opened his
+      heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch by sunrise, and
+      was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, &lsquo;Who was he? Whither did the
+      wanderer go? But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny. Then, let
+      Death come! I shall have built my monument!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a continual flow of natural emotion, gushing forth amid
+      abstracted reverie, which enabled the family to understand this young
+      man&rsquo;s sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick sensibility
+      of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had been betrayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You laugh at me,&rsquo; said he, taking the eldest daughter&rsquo;s hand, and
+      laughing himself. &lsquo;You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to
+      freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington, only that people
+      might spy at me from the country round about. And, truly, that would be a
+      noble pedestal for a man&rsquo;s statue!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is better to sit here by this fire,&rsquo; answered the girl, blushing, &lsquo;and
+      be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I suppose,&rsquo; Said her father, after a fit of musing, &lsquo;there is something
+      natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been turned that
+      way, I might have felt just the same. It is strange, wife, how his talk
+      has set my head running on things that are pretty certain never to come to
+      pass.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Perhaps they may,&rsquo; observed the wife. &lsquo;Is the man thinking what he will
+      do when he is a widower?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no!&rsquo; cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness. &lsquo;When I
+      think of your death, Esther, I think of mine, too. But I was wishing we
+      had a good farm in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Littleton, or some other
+      township round the White Mountains; but not where they could tumble on our
+      heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors and be called Squire,
+      and sent to General Court for a term or two; for a plain, honest man may
+      do as much good there as a lawyer. And when I should be grown quite an old
+      man, and you an old woman, so as not to be long apart, I might die happy
+      enough in my bed, and leave you all crying around me. A slate gravestone
+      would suit me as well as a marble one&mdash;with just my name and age, and
+      a verse of a hymn, and something to let people know that I lived an honest
+      man and died a Christian.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There now!&rsquo; exclaimed the stranger; &lsquo;it is our nature to desire a
+      monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious
+      memory in the universal heart of man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;re in a strange way, tonight,&rsquo; said the wife, with tears in her eyes.
+      &lsquo;They say it&rsquo;s a sign of something, when folks&rsquo; minds go a wandering so.
+      Hark to the children!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in
+      another room, but with an open door between, so that they could be heard
+      talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the
+      infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each other in wild
+      wishes, and childish projects of what they would do when they came to be
+      men and women. At length a little boy, instead of addressing his brothers
+      and sisters, called out to his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you what I wish, mother,&rsquo; cried he. &lsquo;I want you and father and
+      grandma&rsquo;m, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start right away, and
+      go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody could help laughing at the child&rsquo;s notion of leaving a warm bed,
+      and dragging them from a cheerful fire, to visit the basin of the Flume&mdash;a
+      brook, which tumbles over the precipice, deep within the Notch. The boy
+      had hardly spoken when a wagon rattled along the road, and stopped a
+      moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three men, who were
+      cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song, which resounded, in
+      broken notes, between the cliffs, while the singers hesitated whether to
+      continue their journey or put up here for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Father,&rsquo; said the girl, &lsquo;they are calling you by name.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was
+      unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to
+      patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door; and the lash
+      being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, still singing
+      and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily from the
+      heart of the mountain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There, mother!&rsquo; cried the boy, again. &lsquo;They&rsquo;d have given us a ride to the
+      Flume.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again they laughed at the child&rsquo;s pertinacious fancy for a night ramble.
+      But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter&rsquo;s spirit; she
+      looked gravely into the fire, and drew a breath that was almost a sigh. It
+      forced its way, in spite of a little struggle to repress it. Then starting
+      and blushing, she looked quickly round the circle, as if they had caught a
+      glimpse into her bosom. The stranger asked what she had been thinking of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nothing,&rsquo; answered she, with a downcast smile. &lsquo;Only I felt lonesome just
+      then.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people&rsquo;s
+      hearts,&rsquo; said he, half seriously. &lsquo;Shall I tell the secrets of yours? For
+      I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth, and
+      complains of lonesomeness at her mother&rsquo;s side. Shall I put these feelings
+      into words?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They would not be a girl&rsquo;s feelings any longer if they could be put into
+      words,&rsquo; replied the mountain nymph, laughing, but avoiding his eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their
+      hearts, so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be
+      matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his; and the
+      proud, contemplative, yet kindly soul is oftenest captivated by simplicity
+      like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching the happy
+      sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings of a maiden&rsquo;s nature,
+      the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier sound. It seemed, as
+      the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain of the spirits of the
+      blast, who in old Indian times had their dwelling among these mountains,
+      and made their heights and recesses a sacred region. There was a wail
+      along the road, as if a funeral were passing. To chase away the gloom, the
+      family threw pine branches on their fire, till the dry leaves crackled and
+      the flame arose, discovering once again a scene of peace and humble
+      happiness. The light hovered about them fondly, and caressed them all.
+      There were the little faces of the children, peeping from their bed apart,
+      and here the father&rsquo;s frame of strength, the mother&rsquo;s subdued and careful
+      mien, the high-browed youth, the budding girl, and the good old grandam,
+      still knitting in the warmest place. The aged woman looked up from her
+      task, and, with fingers ever busy, was the next to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Old folks have their notions,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;as well as young ones. You&rsquo;ve
+      been wishing and planning; and letting your heads run on one thing and
+      another, till you&rsquo;ve set my mind a wandering too. Now what should an old
+      woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before she comes to her
+      grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till I tell you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it, mother?&rsquo; cried the husband and wife at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer
+      round the fire, informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes some
+      years before&mdash;a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and
+      everything of a finer sort than she had worn since her wedding day. But
+      this evening an old superstition had strangely recurred to her. It used to
+      be said, in her younger days, that if anything were amiss with a corpse,
+      if only the ruff were not smooth, or the cap did not set right, the corpse
+      in the coffin and beneath the clods would strive to put up its cold hands
+      and arrange it. The bare thought made her nervous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t talk so, grandmother!&rsquo; said the girl, shuddering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now&rsquo;&mdash;continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet
+      smiling strangely at her own folly&mdash;&lsquo;I want one of you, my children&mdash;when
+      your mother is dressed and in the coffin&mdash;-I want one of you to hold
+      a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at
+      myself, and see whether all&rsquo;s right?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments,&rsquo; murmured the stranger
+      youth. &lsquo;I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking, and they,
+      unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in the ocean&mdash;that
+      wide and nameless sepulchre?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment, the old woman&rsquo;s ghastly conception so engrossed the minds of
+      her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar of a
+      blast, had grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the fated group were
+      conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the foundations of
+      the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound were the peal of the
+      last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild glance, and remained an
+      instant, pale, affrighted, without utterance, or power to move. Then the
+      same shriek burst simultaneously from all their lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Slide! The Slide!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable horror
+      of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage, and sought
+      refuge in what they deemed a safer spot&mdash;where, in contemplation of
+      such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had
+      quitted their security, and fled right into the pathway of destruction.
+      Down came the whole side of the mountain, in a cataract of ruin. Just
+      before it reached the house, the stream broke into two branches&mdash;shivered
+      not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole vicinity, blocked up the
+      road, and annihilated everything in its dreadful course. Long ere the
+      thunder of the great Slide had ceased to roar among the mountains, the
+      mortal agony had been endured, and the victims were at peace. Their bodies
+      were never found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage
+      chimney up the mountain side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on the
+      hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants had but
+      gone forth to view the devastation of the Slide, and would shortly return,
+      to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had left separate tokens,
+      by which those who had known the family were made to shed a tear for each.
+      Who has not heard their name? (The story has been told far and wide, and
+      Will forever be a legend of these mountains.) Poets have sung their fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had
+      been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the
+      catastrophe of all its inmates. Others denied that there were sufficient
+      grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth, with his
+      dream of Earthly Immortality! His name and person utterly unknown; his
+      history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his
+      death and his existence equally a doubt! Whose was the agony of that death
+      moment?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE GREAT CARBUNCLE
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      (The Indian tradition, on which this somewhat extravagant tale is founded,
+      is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought up in prose.
+      Sullivan, in his History of Maine, written since the Revolution, remarks,
+      that even then the existence of the Great Carbuncle was not entirely
+      discredited.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AT nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the
+      Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves, after a
+      toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come
+      thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save one
+      youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for this
+      wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong enough to
+      induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude hut of branches,
+      and kindling a great fire of shattered pines, that had drifted down the
+      headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank of which they were
+      to pass the night. There was but one of their number, perhaps, who had
+      become so estranged from natural sympathies, by the absorbing spell of the
+      pursuit, as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the sight of human faces, in
+      the remote and solitary region whither they had ascended. A vast extent of
+      wilderness lay between them and the nearest settlement, while scant a mile
+      above their heads was that black verge where the hills throw off their
+      shaggy mantle of forest trees, and either robe themselves in clouds or
+      tower naked into the sky. The roar of the Amonoosuck would have been too
+      awful for endurance if only a solitary man had listened, while the
+      mountain stream talked with the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings, and welcomed
+      one another to the hut, where each man was the host, and all were the
+      guests of the whole company. They spread their individual supplies of food
+      on the flat surface of a rock, and partook of a general repast; at the
+      close of which, a sentiment of good fellowship was perceptible among the
+      party, though repressed by the idea, that the renewed search for the Great
+      Carbuncle must make them strangers again in the morning. Seven men and one
+      young woman, they warmed themselves together at the fire, which extended
+      its bright wall along the whole front of their wigwam. As they observed
+      the various and contrasted figures that made up the assemblage, each man
+      looking like a caricature of himself, in the unsteady light that flickered
+      over him, they came mutually to the conclusion, that an odder society had
+      never met, in city or wilderness, on mountain or plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The eldest of the group, a tall, lean, weather-beaten man, some sixty
+      years of age, was clad in the skins of wild animals, whose fashion of
+      dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf, and the bear, had
+      long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those ill-fated
+      mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom, in their early youth, the
+      Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness, and became the passionate
+      dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew him as the
+      Seeker and by no other name. As none could remember when he first took up
+      the search, there went a fable in the valley of the Saco, that for his
+      inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle, he had been condemned to wander
+      among the mountains till the end of time, still with the same feverish
+      hopes at sunrise&mdash;the same despair at eve. Near this miserable Seeker
+      sat a little elderly personage, wearing a high-crowned hat, shaped
+      somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond the sea, a Doctor Cacaphodel,
+      who had wilted and dried himself into a mummy by continually stooping over
+      charcoal furnaces, and inhaling unwholesome fumes during his researches in
+      chemistry and alchemy. It was told of him, whether truly or not, that, at
+      the commencement of his studies, he had drained his body of all its
+      richest blood, and wasted it, with other inestimable ingredients, in an
+      unsuccessful experiment&mdash;and had never been a well man since. Another
+      of the adventurers was Master bod Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and
+      selector Boston, and an elder of the famous Mr. Norton&rsquo;s church. His
+      enemies had a ridiculous story that Master Pigsnort was accustomed to
+      spend a whole hour after prayer time, every morning and evening, in
+      wallowing naked among an immense quantity of pine-tree shillings, which
+      were the earliest silver coinage of Massachusetts. The fourth whom we
+      shall notice had no name that his companions knew of, and was chiefly
+      distinguished by a sneer that always contorted his thin visage, and by a
+      prodigious pair of spectacles, which were supposed to deform and discolor
+      the whole face of nature, to this gentleman&rsquo;s perception. The fifth
+      adventurer likewise lacked a name, which was the greater pity, as he
+      appeared to be a poet. He was a bright-eyed man, but woefully pined away,
+      which was no more than natural, if, as some people affirmed, his ordinary
+      diet was fog, morning mist, and a slice of the densest cloud within his
+      reach, sauced with moonshine, whenever he could get it. Certain it is,
+      that the poetry which flowed from him had a smack of all these dainties.
+      The sixth of the party was a young man of haughty mien, and sat somewhat
+      apart from the rest, wearing his plumed hat loftily among his elders,
+      while the fire glittered on the rich embroidery of his dress and gleamed
+      intensely on the jewelled pommel of his sword. This was the Lord de Vere,
+      who, when at home, was said to spend much of his time in the burial vault
+      of his dead progenitors, rummaging their mouldy coffins in search of all
+      the earthly pride and vainglory that was hidden among bones and dust; so
+      that, besides his own share, he had the collected haughtiness of his whole
+      line of ancestry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lastly, there was a handsome youth in rustic garb, and by his side a
+      blooming little person, in whom a delicate shade of maiden reserve was
+      just melting into the rich glow of a young wife&rsquo;s affection. Her name was
+      Hannah, and her husband&rsquo;s Matthew; two homely names, yet well enough
+      adapted to the simple pair, who seemed strangely out of place among the
+      whimsical fraternity whose wits had been set agog by the Great Carbuncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire, sat
+      this varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single object,
+      that, of whatever else they began to speak, their closing words were sure
+      to be illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related the
+      circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a traveller&rsquo;s
+      tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country, and had
+      immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as could only,
+      be quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, so long ago as when the
+      famous Captain Smith visited these coasts, had seen it blazing far at sea,
+      and had felt no rest in all the intervening years till now that he took up
+      the search. A third, being camped on a hunting expedition full forty miles
+      south of the White Mountains, awoke at midnight, and beheld the Great
+      Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so that the shadows of the trees fell
+      backward from it. They spoke of the innumerable attempts which had been
+      made to reach the spot, and of the singular fatality which had hitherto
+      withheld success from all adventurers, though it might seem so easy to
+      follow to its source a light that overpowered the moon, and almost matched
+      the sun. It was observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of
+      every other in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a
+      scarcely hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one. As if
+      to allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian traditions
+      that a spirit kept watch about the gem, and bewildered those who sought it
+      either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher hills, or by calling
+      up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it hung. But these tales were
+      deemed unworthy of credit, all professing to believe that the search had
+      been baffled by want of sagacity or perseverance in the adventurers, or
+      such other causes as might naturally obstruct the passage to any given
+      point among the intricacies of forest, valley, and mountain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles
+      looked round upon the party, making each individual, in turn, the object
+      of the sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So, fellow-pilgrims,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;here we are, seven wise men, and one fair
+      damsel&mdash;who, doubtless, is as wise as any graybeard of the company:
+      here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Methinks,
+      now, it were not amiss that each of us declare what he proposes to do with
+      the Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to clutch it. What says
+      our friend in the bear skin? How mean you, good sir, to enjoy the prize
+      which you have been seeking, the Lord knows how long, among the Crystal
+      Hills?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How enjoy it!&rsquo; exclaimed the aged Seeker, bitterly. &lsquo;I hope for no
+      enjoyment from it; that folly has passed long ago! I keep up the search
+      for this accursed stone because the vain ambition of my youth has become a
+      fate upon me in old age. The pursuit alone is my strength&mdash;the energy
+      of my soul&mdash;the warmth of my blood&mdash;and the pith and marrow of
+      my bones! Were I to turn my back upon it I should fall down dead on the
+      hither side of the Notch, which is the gateway of this mountain region.
+      Yet not to have my wasted lifetime back again would I give up my hopes of
+      the Great Carbuncle! Having found it, I shall bear it to a certain cavern
+      that I wot of, and there, grasping it in my arms, lie down and die, and
+      keep it buried with me forever.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O wretch, regardless of the interests of science!&rsquo; cried Doctor
+      Cacaphodel, with philosophic indignation. &lsquo;Thou art not worthy to behold,
+      even from afar off, the lustre of this most precious gem that ever was
+      concocted in the laboratory of Nature. Mine is the sole purpose for which
+      a wise man may desire the possession of the Great Carbuncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Immediately on obtaining it&mdash;for I have a presentiment, good people,
+      that the prize is reserved to crown my scientific reputation&mdash;I shall
+      return to Europe, and employ my remaining years in reducing it to its
+      first elements. A portion of the stone will I grind to impalpable powder;
+      other parts shall be dissolved in acids, or whatever solvents will act
+      upon so admirable a composition; and the remainder I design to melt in the
+      crucible, or set on fire with the blow-pipe. By these various methods I
+      shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow the result of my
+      labors upon the world in a folio volume.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Excellent!&rsquo; quoth the man with the spectacles. &lsquo;Nor need you hesitate,
+      learned sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem; since the
+      perusal of your folio may teach every mother&rsquo;s son of us to concoct a
+      Great Carbuncle of his own.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But, verily,&rsquo; said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, &lsquo;for mine own part I object
+      to the making of these counterfeits, as being calculated to reduce the
+      marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, sirs, I have an
+      interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my regular traffic,
+      leaving my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and putting my credit to
+      great hazard, and, furthermore, have put myself in peril of death or
+      captivity by the accursed heathen savages&mdash;and all this without
+      daring to ask the prayers of the congregation, because the quest for the
+      Great Carbuncle is deemed little better than a traffic with the Evil One.
+      Now think ye that I would have done this grievous wrong to my soul, body,
+      reputation, and estate, without a reasonable chance of profit?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not I, pious Master Pigsnort,&rsquo; said the man with the spectacles. &lsquo;I never
+      laid such a great folly to thy charge.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Truly, I hope not,&rsquo; said the merchant. &lsquo;Now, as touching this Great
+      Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it; but be
+      it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will surely
+      outvalue the Great Mogul&rsquo;s best diamond, which he holds at an incalculable
+      sum. Wherefore, I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on shipboard, and
+      voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or into Heathendom, if
+      Providence should send me thither, and, in a word, dispose of the gem to
+      the best bidder among the potentates of the earth, that he may place it
+      among his crown jewels. If any of ye have a wiser plan, let him expound
+      it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That have I, thou sordid man!&rsquo; exclaimed the poet. &lsquo;Dost thou desire
+      nothing brighter than gold that thou wouldst transmute all this ethereal
+      lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For myself, hiding
+      the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my attic chamber, in one
+      of the darksome alleys of London. There, night and day, will I gaze upon
+      it; my soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be diffused throughout my
+      intellectual powers, and gleam brightly in every line of poesy that I
+      indite. Thus, long ages after I am gone, the splendor of the Great
+      Carbuncle will blaze around my name?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well said, Master Poet!&rsquo; cried he of the spectacles. &lsquo;Hide it under thy
+      cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes, and make thee
+      look like a jack-o&rsquo;-lantern!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;To think!&rsquo; ejaculated the Lord de Vere, rather to himself than his
+      companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his intercourse&mdash;&lsquo;to
+      think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk of conveying the Great
+      Carbuncle to a garret in Grub Street! Have not I resolved within myself
+      that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament for the great hall of my
+      ancestral castle? There shall it flame for ages, making a noonday of
+      midnight, glittering on the suits of armor, the banners, and escutcheons,
+      that hang around the wall, and keeping bright the memory of heroes.
+      Wherefore have all other adventurers sought the prize in vain but that I
+      might win it, and make it a symbol of the glories of our lofty line? And
+      never, on the diadem of the White Mountains, did the Great Carbuncle hold
+      a place half so honored as is reserved for it in the hall of the De
+      Veres!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is a noble thought,&rsquo; said the Cynic, with an obsequious sneer. &lsquo;Yet,
+      might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp, and
+      would display the glories of your lordship&rsquo;s progenitors more truly in the
+      ancestral vault than in the castle hall.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, forsooth,&rsquo; observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand in hand
+      with his bride, &lsquo;the gentleman has bethought himself of a profitable use
+      for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking it for a like
+      purpose.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How, fellow!&rsquo; exclaimed his lordship, in surprise. &lsquo;What castle hall hast
+      thou to hang it in?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No castle,&rsquo; replied Matthew, &lsquo;but as neat a cottage as any within sight
+      of the Crystal Hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I, being
+      wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the Great Carbuncle,
+      because we shall need its light in the long winter evenings; and it will
+      be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they visit us. It will
+      shine through the house so that we may pick up a pin in any corner, and
+      will set all the windows aglowing as if there were a great fire of pine
+      knots in the chimney. And then how pleasant, when we awake in the night,
+      to be able to see one another&rsquo;s faces!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a general smile among the adventurers at the simplicity of the
+      young couple&rsquo;s project in regard to this wondrous and invaluable stone,
+      with which the greatest monarch on earth might have been proud to adorn
+      his palace. Especially the man with spectacles, who had sneered at all the
+      company in turn, now twisted his visage into such an expression of
+      ill-natured mirth, that Matthew asked him, rather peevishly, what he
+      himself meant to do with the Great Carbuncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Great Carbuncle!&rsquo; answered the Cynic, with ineffable scorn. &lsquo;Why, you
+      blockhead, there is no such thing in rerum natura. I have come three
+      thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every peak of these
+      mountains, and poke my head into every chasm, for the sole purpose of
+      demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit less an ass than
+      thyself that the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the adventurers
+      to the Crystal Hills; but none so vain, so foolish, and so impious too, as
+      that of the scoffer with the prodigious spectacles. He was one of those
+      wretched and evil men whose yearnings are downward to the darkness,
+      instead of heavenward, and who, could they but distinguish the lights
+      which God hath kindled for us, would count the midnight gloom their
+      chiefest glory. As the Cynic spoke, several of the party were startled by
+      a gleam of red splendor, that showed the huge shapes of the surrounding
+      mountains and the rock-bed of the turbulent river with an illumination
+      unlike that of their fire on the trunks and black boughs of the forest
+      trees. They listened for the roll of thunder, but heard nothing, and were
+      glad that the tempest came not near them. The stars, those dial-points of
+      heaven, now warned the adventurers to close their eyes on the blazing
+      logs, and open them, in dreams, to the glow of the Great Carbuncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest corner
+      of the wigwam, and were separated from the rest of the party by a curtain
+      of curiously-woven twigs, such as might have hung, in deep festoons,
+      around the bridal-bower of Eve. The modest little wife had wrought this
+      piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking. She and her husband
+      fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped, and awoke from visions of
+      unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed light of one another&rsquo;s eyes.
+      They awoke at the same instant, and with one happy smile beaming over
+      their two faces, which grew brighter with their consciousness of the
+      reality of life and love. But no sooner did she recollect where they were,
+      than the bride peeped through the interstices of the leafy curtain, and
+      saw that the outer room of the hut was deserted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Up, dear Matthew!&rsquo; cried she, in haste. &lsquo;The strange folk are all gone!
+      Up, this very minute, or we shall loose the Great Carbuncle!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty prize
+      which had lured them thither, that they had slept peacefully all night,
+      and till the summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine; while the
+      other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish wakefulness, or
+      dreamed of climbing precipices, and set off to realize their dreams with
+      the earliest peep of dawn. But Matthew and Hannah, after their calm rest,
+      were as light as two young deer, and merely stopped to say their prayers
+      and wash themselves in a cold pool of the Amonoosuck, and then to taste a
+      morsel of food, ere they turned their faces to the mountainside. It was a
+      sweet emblem of conjugal affection, as they toiled up the difficult
+      ascent, gathering strength from the mutual aid which they afforded. After
+      several little accidents, such as a torn robe, a lost shoe, and the
+      entanglement of Hannah&rsquo;s hair in a bough, they reached the upper verge of
+      the forest, and were now to pursue a more adventurous course. The
+      innumerable trunks and heavy foliage of the trees had hitherto shut in
+      their thoughts, which now shrank affrighted from the region of wind and
+      cloud and naked rocks and desolate sunshine, that rose immeasurably above
+      them. They gazed back at the obscure wilderness which they had traversed,
+      and longed to be buried again in its depths rather than trust themselves
+      to so vast and visible a solitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Shall we go on?&rsquo; said Matthew, throwing his arm round Hannah&rsquo;s waist,
+      both to protect her and to comfort his heart by drawing her close to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman&rsquo;s love of jewels, and
+      could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the world,
+      in spite of the perils with which it must be won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let us climb a little higher,&rsquo; whispered she, yet tremulously, as she
+      turned her face upward to the lonely sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come, then,&rsquo; said Matthew, mustering his manly courage and drawing her
+      along with him, for she became timid again the moment that he grew bold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now
+      treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines,
+      which, by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely
+      reached three feet in altitude. Next, they came to masses and fragments of
+      naked rock heaped confusedly together, like a cairn reared by giants in
+      memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing
+      breathed, nothing grew; there was no life but what was concentrated in
+      their two hearts; they had climbed so high that Nature herself seemed no
+      longer to keep them company. She lingered beneath them, within the verge
+      of the forest trees, and sent a farewell glance after her children as they
+      strayed where her own green footprints had never been. But soon they were
+      to be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark the mists began to gather
+      below, casting black spots of shadow on the vast landscape, and sailing
+      heavily to one centre, as if the loftiest mountain peak had summoned a
+      council of its kindred clouds. Finally, the vapors welded themselves, as
+      it were, into a mass, presenting the appearance of a pavement over which
+      the wanderers might have trodden, but where they would vainly have sought
+      an avenue to the blessed earth which they had lost. And the lovers yearned
+      to behold that green earth again, more intensely, alas! than, beneath a
+      clouded sky, they had ever desired a glimpse of heaven. They even felt it
+      a relief to their desolation when the mists, creeping gradually up the
+      mountain, concealed its lonely peak, and thus annihilated, at least for
+      them, the whole region of visible space. But they drew closely together,
+      with a fond and melancholy gaze, dreading lest the universal cloud should
+      snatch them from each other&rsquo;s sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, perhaps, they would have been resolute to climb as far and as high,
+      between earth and heaven, as they could find foothold, if Hannah&rsquo;s
+      strength had not begun to fail, and with that, her courage also. Her
+      breath grew short. She refused to burden her husband with her weight, but
+      often tottered against his side, and recovered herself each time by a
+      feebler effort. At last, she sank down on one of the rocky steps of the
+      acclivity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We are lost, dear Matthew,&rsquo; said she, mournfully. &lsquo;We shall never find
+      our way to the earth again. And oh how happy we might have been in our
+      cottage!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dear heart! we will yet be happy there,&rsquo; answered Matthew. &lsquo;Look! In this
+      direction, the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist. By its aid, I can
+      direct our course to the passage of the Notch. Let us go back, love, and
+      dream no more of the Great Carbuncle!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The sun cannot be yonder,&rsquo; said Hannah, with despondence. &lsquo;By this time
+      it must be noon. If there could ever be any sunshine here, it would come
+      from above our heads.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But look!&rsquo; repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone. &lsquo;It is
+      brightening every moment. If not sunshine, what can it be?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was breaking
+      through the mist, and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which
+      continually grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles were interfused
+      with the gloom. Now, also, the cloud began to roll away from the mountain,
+      while, as it heavily withdrew, one object after another started out of its
+      impenetrable obscurity into sight, with precisely the effect of a new
+      creation, before the indistinctness of the old chaos had been completely
+      swallowed up. As the process went on, they saw the gleaming of water close
+      at their feet, and found themselves on the very border of a mountain lake,
+      deep, bright, clear, and calmly beautiful, spreading from brim to brim of
+      a basin that had been scooped out of the solid rock. A ray of glory
+      flashed across its surface. The pilgrims looked whence it should proceed,
+      but closed their eyes with a thrill of awful admiration, to exclude the
+      fervid splendor that glowed from the brow of a cliff impending over the
+      enchanted lake. For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery, and
+      found the long-sought shrine of the Great Carbuncle!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They threw their arms around each other, and trembled at their own
+      success; for, as the legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick upon their
+      memory, they felt themselves marked out by fate and the consciousness was
+      fearful. Often, from childhood upward, they had seen it shining like a
+      distant star. And now that star was throwing its intensest lustre on their
+      hearts. They seemed changed to one another&rsquo;s eyes, in the red brilliancy
+      that flamed upon their cheeks, while it lent the same fire to the lake,
+      the rocks, and sky, and to the mists which had rolled back before its
+      power. But, with their next glance, they beheld an object that drew their
+      attention even from the mighty stone. At the base of the cliff, directly
+      beneath the Great Carbuncle, appeared the figure of a man, with his arms
+      extended in the act of climbing, and his face turned upward, as if to
+      drink the full gush of splendor. But he stirred not, no more than if
+      changed to marble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is the Seeker,&rsquo; whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her husband&rsquo;s
+      arm. &lsquo;Matthew, he is dead.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The joy of success has killed him,&rsquo; replied Matthew, trembling violently.
+      &lsquo;Or, perhaps, the very light of the Great Carbuncle was death!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Great Carbuncle,&rsquo; cried a peevish voice behind them. &lsquo;The Great
+      Humbug! If you have found it, prithee point it out to me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They turned their heads, and there was the Cynic, with his prodigious
+      spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at the
+      rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great
+      Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all the
+      scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its radiance
+      actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet, as he turned
+      his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be convinced that there was
+      the least glimmer there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where is your Great Humbug?&rsquo; he repeated. &lsquo;I challenge you to make me see
+      it!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There,&rsquo; said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and turning
+      the Cynic round towards the illuminated cliff. &lsquo;Take off those abominable
+      spectacles, and you cannot help seeing it!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now these colored spectacles probably darkened the Cynic&rsquo;s sight, in at
+      least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people gaze at
+      an eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched them from his
+      nose, and fixed a bold stare full upon the ruddy blaze of the Great
+      Carbuncle. But scarcely had he encountered it, when, with a deep,
+      shuddering groan, he dropped his head, and pressed both hands across his
+      miserable eyes. Thenceforth there was, in very truth, no light of the
+      Great Carbuncle, nor any other light on earth, nor light of heaven itself,
+      for the poor Cynic. So long accustomed to View all objects through a
+      medium that deprived them of every glimpse of brightness, a single flash
+      of so glorious a phenomenon, striking upon his naked vision, had blinded
+      him forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Matthew,&rsquo; said Hannah, clinging to him, &lsquo;let us go hence!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Matthew saw that she was faint, and kneeling down, supported her in his
+      arms, while he threw some of the thrillingly cold water of the enchanted
+      lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her, but could not renovate her
+      courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, dearest!&rsquo; cried Matthew, pressing her tremulous form to his breast&mdash;&lsquo;we
+      will go hence, and return to our humble cottage. The blessed sunshine and
+      the quiet moonlight shall come through our window. We will kindle the
+      cheerful glow of our hearth, at eventide, and be happy in its light. But
+      never again will we desire more light than all the world may share with
+      us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; said his bride, &lsquo;for how could we live by day, or sleep by night, in
+      this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of the hollow of their hands, they drank each a draught from the lake,
+      which presented them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly lip. Then,
+      lending their guidance to the blinded Cynic, who uttered not a word, and
+      even stifled his groans in his own most wretched heart, they began to
+      descend the mountain. Yet, as they left the shore, till then untrodden, of
+      the spirit&rsquo;s lake, they threw a farewell glance towards the cliff, and
+      beheld the vapors gathering in dense volumes, through which the gem burned
+      duskily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, the legend goes on
+      to tell, that the worshipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up the
+      quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to betake himself
+      again to his warehouse, near the town dock, in Boston. But, as he passed
+      through the Notch of the mountains, a war party of Indians captured our
+      unlucky merchant, and carried him to Montreal, there holding him in
+      bondage, till, by the payment of a heavy ransom, he had woefully
+      subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shillings. By his long absence,
+      moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that, for the rest of his
+      life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a sixpence worth of
+      copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned to his laboratory with
+      a prodigious fragment of granite, which he ground to powder, dissolved in
+      acids, melted in the crucible, and burned with the blow-pipe, and
+      published the result of his experiments in one of the heaviest folios of
+      the day. And, for all these purposes, the gem itself could not have
+      answered better than the granite. The poet, by a somewhat similar mistake,
+      made prize of a great piece of ice, which he found in a sunless chasm of
+      the mountains, and swore that it corresponded, in all points, with his
+      idea of the Great Carbuncle. The critics say, that, if his poetry lacked
+      the splendor of the gem, it retained all the coldness of the ice. The Lord
+      de Vere went back to his ancestral hall, where he contented himself with a
+      wax-lighted chandelier, and filled, in due course of time, another coffin
+      in the ancestral vault. As the funeral torches gleamed within that dark
+      receptacle, there was no need of the Great Carbuncle to show the vanity of
+      earthly pomp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the world, a
+      miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire of light, for
+      the wilful blindness of his former life. The whole night long, he would
+      lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he turned his face
+      eastward, at sunrise, as duly as a Persian idolater; he made a pilgrimage
+      to Rome, to witness the magnificent illumination of St. Peter&rsquo;s Church;
+      and finally perished in the great fire of London, into the midst of which
+      he had thrust himself, with the desperate idea of catching one feeble ray
+      from the blaze that was kindling earth and heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years, and were fond of telling
+      the legend of the Great Carbuncle. The tale, however, towards the close of
+      their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full credence that had been
+      accorded to it by those who remembered the ancient lustre of the gem. For
+      it is affirmed that, from the hour when two mortals had shown themselves
+      so simply wise as to reject a jewel which would have dimmed all earthly
+      things, its splendor waned. When other pilgrims reached the cliff, they
+      found only an opaque stone, with particles of mica glittering on its
+      surface. There is also a tradition that, as the youthful pair departed,
+      the gem was loosened from the forehead of the cliff, and fell into the
+      enchanted lake, and that, at noontide, the Seeker&rsquo;s form may still be seen
+      to bend over its quenchless gleam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing as of old, and say
+      that they have caught its radiance, like a flash of summer lightning, far
+      down the valley of the Saco. And be it owned that, many a mile from the
+      Crystal Hills, I saw a wondrous light around their summits, and was lured,
+      by the faith of poesy, to be the latest pilgrim of the GREAT CARBUNCLE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SKETCHES FROM MEMORY
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      IT was now the middle of September. We had come since sunrise from
+      Bartlett, passing up through the valley of the Saco, which extends between
+      mountainous walls, sometimes with a steep ascent, but often as level as a
+      church aisle. All that day and two preceding ones we had been loitering
+      towards the heart of the White Mountains&mdash;those old crystal hills,
+      whose mysterious brilliancy had gleamed upon our distant wanderings before
+      we thought of visiting them. Height after height had risen and towered one
+      above another till the clouds began to hang below the peaks. Down their
+      slopes were the red pathways of the slides, those avalanches of earth,
+      stones and trees, which descend into the hollows, leaving vestiges of
+      their track hardly to be effaced by the vegetation of ages. We had
+      mountains behind us and mountains on each side, and a group of mightier
+      ones ahead. Still our road went up along the Saco, right towards the
+      centre of that group, as if to climb above the clouds in its passage to
+      the farther region.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In old times the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the
+      northern Indians coming down upon them from this mountain rampart through
+      some defile known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a wondrous path. A
+      demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans, was travelling up the
+      valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside as he passed, till at length
+      a great mountain took its stand directly across his intended road. He
+      tarries not for such an obstacle, but, rending it asunder a thousand feet
+      from peak to base, discloses its treasures of hidden minerals, its sunless
+      waters, all the secrets of the mountain&rsquo;s inmost heart, with a mighty
+      fracture of rugged precipices on each side. This is the Notch of the White
+      Hills. Shame on me that I have attempted to describe it by so mean an
+      image&mdash;feeling, as I do, that it is one of those symbolic scenes
+      which lead the mind to the sentiment, though not to the conception, of
+      Omnipotence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had now reached a narrow passage, which showed almost the appearance of
+      having been cut by human strength and artifice in the solid rock. There
+      was a wall of granite on each side, high and precipitous, especially on
+      our right, and so smooth that a few evergreens could hardly find foothold
+      enough to grow there. This is the entrance, or, in the direction we were
+      going, the extremity, of the romantic defile of the Notch. Before emerging
+      from it, the rattling of wheels approached behind us, and a stage-coach
+      rumbled out of the mountain, with seats on top and trunks behind, and a
+      smart driver, in a drab greatcoat, touching the wheel horses with the
+      whipstock and reining in the leaders. To my mind there was a sort of
+      poetry in such an incident, hardly inferior to what would have accompanied
+      the painted array of an Indian war party gliding forth from the same wild
+      chasm. All the passengers, except a very fat lady on the back seat, had
+      alighted. One was a mineralogist, a scientific, green-spectacled figure in
+      black, bearing a heavy hammer, with which he did great damage to the
+      precipices, and put the fragments in his pocket. Another was a
+      well-dressed young man, who carried an opera glass set in gold, and seemed
+      to be making a quotation from some of Byron&rsquo;s rhapsodies on mountain
+      scenery. There was also a trader, returning from Portland to the upper
+      part of Vermont; and a fair young girl, with a very faint bloom like one
+      of those pale and delicate flowers which sometimes occur among alpine
+      cliffs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They disappeared, and we followed them, passing through a deep pine
+      forest, which for some miles allowed us to see nothing but its own dismal
+      shade. Towards nightfall we reached a level amphitheatre, surrounded by a
+      great rampart of hills, which shut out the sunshine long before it left
+      the external world. It was here that we obtained our first view, except at
+      a distance, of the principal group of mountains. They are majestic, and
+      even awful, when contemplated in a proper mood, yet, by their breadth of
+      base and the long ridges which support them, give the idea of immense bulk
+      rather than of towering height. Mount Washington, indeed, looked near to
+      heaven: he was white with snow a mile downward, and had caught the only
+      cloud that was sailing through the atmosphere to veil his head. Let us
+      forget the other names of American statesmen that have been stamped upon
+      these hills, but still call the loftiest Washington. Mountains are Earth&rsquo;s
+      undecaying monuments. They must stand while she endures, and never should
+      be consecrated to the mere great men of their own age and country, but to
+      the mighty ones alone, whose glory is universal, and whom all time will
+      render illustrious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The air, not often sultry in this elevated region, nearly two thousand
+      feet above the sea, was now sharp and cold, like that of a clear November
+      evening in the lowlands. By morning, probably, there would be a frost, if
+      not a snowfall, on the grass and rye, and an icy surface over the standing
+      water. I was glad to perceive a prospect of comfortable quarters in a
+      house which we were approaching, and of pleasant company in the guests who
+      were assembled at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      OUR EVENING PARTY AMONG THE MOUNTAINS We stood in front of a good
+      substantial farmhouse, of old date in that wild country. A sign over the
+      door denoted it to be the White Mountain Post Office&mdash;an
+      establishment which distributes letters and newspapers to perhaps a score
+      of persons, comprising the population of two or three townships among the
+      hills. The broad and weighty antlers of a deer, &lsquo;a stag of ten,&rsquo; were
+      fastened at the corner of the house; a fox&rsquo;s bushy tail was nailed beneath
+      them; and a huge black paw lay on the ground, newly severed and still
+      bleeding the trophy of a bear hunt. Among several persons collected about
+      the doorsteps, the most remarkable was a sturdy mountaineer, of six feet
+      two and corresponding bulk, with a heavy set of features, such as might be
+      moulded on his own blacksmith&rsquo;s anvil, but yet indicative of mother wit
+      and rough humor. As we appeared, he uplifted a tin trumpet, four or five
+      feet long, and blew a tremendous blast, either in honor of our arrival or
+      to awaken an echo from the opposite hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ethan Crawford&rsquo;s guests were of such a motley description as to form quite
+      a picturesque group, seldom seen together except at some place like this,
+      at once the pleasure house of fashionable tourists and the homely inn of
+      country travellers. Among the company at the door were the mineralogist
+      and the owner of the gold opera glass whom we had encountered in the
+      Notch; two Georgian gentlemen, who had chilled their southern blood that
+      morning on the top of Mount Washington; a physician and his wife from
+      Conway; a trader of Burlington, and an old squire of the Green Mountains;
+      and two young married couples, all the way from Massachusetts, on the
+      matrimonial jaunt, Besides these strangers, the rugged county of Coos, in
+      which we were, was represented by half a dozen wood-cutters, who had slain
+      a bear in the forest and smitten off his paw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had joined the party, and had a moment&rsquo;s leisure to examine them before
+      the echo of Ethan&rsquo;s blast returned from the hill. Not one, but many echoes
+      had caught up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted its complicated
+      threads, and found a thousand aerial harmonies in one stern trumpet tone.
+      It was a distinct yet distant and dreamlike symphony of melodious
+      instruments, as if an airy band had been hidden on the hillside and made
+      faint music at the summons. No subsequent trial produced so clear,
+      delicate, and spiritual a concert as the first. A field-piece was then
+      discharged from the top of a neighboring hill, and gave birth to one long
+      reverberation, which ran round the circle of mountains in an unbroken
+      chain of sound and rolled away without a separate echo. After these
+      experiments, the cold atmosphere drove us all into the house, with the
+      keenest appetites for supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It did one&rsquo;s heart good to see the great fires that were kindled in the
+      parlor and bar-room, especially the latter, where the fireplace was built
+      of rough stone, and might have contained the trunk of an old tree for a
+      backlog. A man keeps a comfortable hearth when his own forest is at his
+      very door. In the parlor, when the evening was fairly set in, we held our
+      hands before our eyes to shield them from the ruddy glow, and began a
+      pleasant variety of conversation. The mineralogist and the physician
+      talked about the invigorating qualities of the mountain air, and its
+      excellent effect on Ethan Crawford&rsquo;s father, an old man of seventy-five,
+      with the unbroken frame of middle life. The two brides and the doctor&rsquo;s
+      wife held a whispered discussion, which, by their frequent titterings and
+      a blush or two, seemed to have reference to the trials or enjoyments of
+      the matrimonial state. The bridegrooms sat together in a corner, rigidly
+      silent, like Quakers whom the spirit moveth not, being still in the odd
+      predicament of bashfulness towards their own young wives. The Green
+      Mountain squire chose me for his companion, and described the difficulties
+      he had met with half a century ago in travelling from the Connecticut
+      River through the Notch to Conway, now a single day&rsquo;s journey, though it
+      had cost him eighteen. The Georgians held the album between them, and
+      favored us with the few specimens of its contents which they considered
+      ridiculous enough to be worth hearing. One extract met with deserved
+      applause. It was a &lsquo;Sonnet to the Snow on Mount Washington,&rsquo; and had been
+      contributed that very afternoon, bearing a signature of great distinction
+      in magazines and annals. The lines were elegant and full of fancy, but too
+      remote from familiar sentiment, and cold as their subject, resembling
+      those curious specimens of crystallized vapor which I observed next day on
+      the mountain top. The poet was understood to be the young gentleman of the
+      gold opera glass, who heard our laudatory remarks with the composure of a
+      veteran.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was our party, and such their ways of amusement. But on a winter
+      evening another set of guests assembled at the hearth where these summer
+      travellers were now sitting. I once had it in contemplation to spend a
+      month hereabouts, in sleighing time, for the sake of studying the yeomen
+      of New England, who then elbow each other through the Notch by hundreds,
+      on their way to Portland. There could be no better school for such a place
+      than Ethan Crawford&rsquo;s inn. Let the student go thither in December, sit
+      down with the teamsters at their meals, share their evening merriment, and
+      repose with them at night when every bed has its three occupants, and
+      parlor, barroom, and kitchen are strewn with slumberers around the fire.
+      Then let him rise before daylight, button his greatcoat, muffle up his
+      ears, and stride with the departing caravan a mile or two, to see how
+      sturdily they make head against the blast. A treasure of characteristic
+      traits will repay all inconveniences, even should a frozen nose be of the
+      number.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conversation of our party soon became more animated and sincere, and
+      we recounted some traditions of the Indians, who believed that the father
+      and mother of their race were saved from a deluge by ascending the peak of
+      Mount Washington. The children of that pair have been overwhelmed, and
+      found no such refuge. In the mythology of the savage, these mountains were
+      afterwards considered sacred and inaccessible, full of unearthly wonders,
+      illuminated at lofty heights by the blaze of precious stones, and
+      inhabited by deities, who sometimes shrouded themselves in the snowstorm
+      and came down on the lower world. There are few legends more poetical than
+      that of the&rsquo; Great Carbuncle&rsquo; of the White Mountains. The belief was
+      communicated to the English settlers, and is hardly yet extinct, that a
+      gem, of such immense size as to be seen shining miles away, hangs from a
+      rock over a clear, deep lake, high up among the hills. They who had once
+      beheld its splendor were inthralled with an unutterable yearning to
+      possess it. But a spirit guarded that inestimable jewel, and bewildered
+      the adventurer with a dark mist from the enchanted lake. Thus life was
+      worn away in the vain search for an unearthly treasure, till at length the
+      deluded one went up the mountain, still sanguine as in youth, but returned
+      no more. On this theme methinks I could frame a tale with a deep moral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to these superstitions of the
+      red men, though we spoke of them in the centre of the haunted region. The
+      habits and sentiments of that departed people were too distinct from those
+      of their successors to find much real sympathy. It has often been a matter
+      of regret to me that I was shut out from the most peculiar field of
+      American fiction by an inability to see any romance, or poetry, or
+      grandeur, or beauty in the Indian character, at least till such traits
+      were pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian story. Yet no writer can
+      be more secure of a permanent place in our literature than the biographer
+      of the Indian chiefs. His subject, as referring to tribes which have
+      mostly vanished from the earth, gives him a right to be placed on a
+      classic shelf, apart from the merits which will sustain him there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I made inquiries whether, in his researches about these parts, our
+      mineralogist had found the three &lsquo;Silver Hills&rsquo; which an Indian sachem
+      sold to an Englishman nearly two hundred years ago, and the treasure of
+      which the posterity of the purchaser have been looking for ever since. But
+      the man of science had ransacked every hill along the Saco, and knew
+      nothing of these prodigious piles of wealth. By this time, as usual with
+      men on the eve of great adventure, we had prolonged our session deep into
+      the night, considering how early we were to set out on our six miles&rsquo; ride
+      to the foot of Mount Washington. There was now a general breaking up. I
+      scrutinized the faces of the two bridegrooms, and saw but little
+      probability of their leaving the bosom of earthly bliss, in the first week
+      of the honeymoon and at the frosty hour of three, to climb above the
+      clouds; nor when I felt how sharp the wind was as it rushed through a
+      broken pane and eddied between the chinks of my unplastered chamber, did I
+      anticipate much alacrity on my own part, though we were to seek for the
+      &lsquo;Great Carbuncle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/1916.txt b/1916.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5066c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1916.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2291 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Stone Face, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Great Stone Face
+       And Other Tales Of The White Mountains
+
+Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+Release Date: February 25, 2006 [EBook #1916]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT STONE FACE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT STONE FACE AND OTHER TALES OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+
+By Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+
+1882
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     Introduction
+     The Great Stone Face
+     The Ambitious Guest
+     The Great Carbuncle
+     Sketches From Memory
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+THE first three numbers in this collection are tales of the White Hills
+in New Hampshire. The passages from Sketches from Memory show that
+Hawthorne had visited the mountains in one of his occasional rambles
+from home, but there are no entries in his Note Books which give
+accounts of such a visit. There is, however, among these notes
+the following interesting paragraph, written in 1840 and clearly
+foreshadowing The Great Stone Face:
+
+'The semblance of a human face to be formed on the side of a mountain,
+or in the fracture of a small stone, by a lusus naturae [freak of
+nature]. The face is an object of curiosity for years or centuries, and
+by and by a boy is born whose features gradually assume the aspect of
+that portrait. At some critical juncture the resemblance is found to be
+perfect. A prophecy may be connected.'
+
+It is not impossible that this conceit occurred to Hawthorne before he
+had himself seen the Old Man of the Mountain, or the Profile, in the
+Franconia Notch which is generally associated in the minds of readers
+with The Great Stone Face.
+
+In The Ambitious Guest he has made use of the incident still told to
+travellers through the Notch, of the destruction of the Willey family
+in August, 1826. The house occupied by the family was on the slope of
+a mountain, and after a long drought there was a terrible tempest which
+not only raised the river to a great height but loosened the surface of
+the mountain so that a great landslide took place. The house was in
+the track of the slide, and the family rushed out of doors. Had they
+remained within they would have been safe, for a ledge above the house
+parted the avalanche so that it was diverted into two paths and swept
+past the house on either side. Mr. and Mrs. Willey, their five children,
+and two hired men were crushed under the weight of earth, rocks, and
+trees.
+
+In the Sketches from Memory Hawthorne gives an intimation of the tale
+which he might write and did afterward write of The Great Carbuncle. The
+paper is interesting as showing what were the actual experiences out of
+which he formed his imaginative stories.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT STONE FACE and Other Tales Of The White Mountains
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT STONE FACE
+
+One afternoon, when the sun was going down, a mother and her little boy
+sat at the door of their cottage, talking about the Great Stone Face.
+They had but to lift their eyes, and there it was plainly to be seen,
+though miles away, with the sunshine brightening all its features.
+And what was the Great Stone Face? Embosomed amongst a family of
+lofty mountains, there was a valley so spacious that it contained many
+thousand inhabitants. Some of these good people dwelt in log-huts, with
+the black forest all around them, on the steep and difficult hillsides.
+Others had their homes in comfortable farm-houses, and cultivated the
+rich soil on the gentle slopes or level surfaces of the valley. Others,
+again, were congregated into populous villages, where some wild,
+highland rivulet, tumbling down from its birthplace in the upper
+mountain region, had been caught and tamed by human cunning, and
+compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories. The inhabitants of
+this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many modes of life. But all
+of them, grown people and children, had a kind of familiarity with the
+Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift of distinguishing
+this grand natural phenomenon more perfectly than many of their
+neighbors.
+
+The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature in her mood of majestie
+playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a mountain by some
+immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as,
+when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of
+the human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan,
+had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad
+arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its long
+bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have
+rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other.
+True it is, that if the spectator approached too near, he lost the
+outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern only a heap of
+ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon another.
+Retracing his steps, however, the wondrous features would again be seen;
+and the farther he withdrew from them, the more like a human face, with
+all its original divinity intact, did they appear; until, as it grew dim
+in the distance, with the clouds and glorified vapor of the mountains
+clustering about it, the Great Stone Face seemed positively to be alive.
+
+It was a happy lot for children to grow up to manhood or womanhood with
+the Great Stone Face before their eyes, for all the features were noble,
+and the expression was at once grand and sweet, as if it were the glow
+of a vast, warm heart, that embraced all mankind in its affections, and
+had room for more. It was an education only to look at it. According to
+the belief of many people, the valley owed much of its fertility to this
+benign aspect that was continually beaming over it, illuminating the
+clouds, and infusing its tenderness into the sunshine.
+
+As we began with saying, a mother and her little boy sat at their
+cottage-door, gazing at the Great Stone Face, and talking about it. The
+child's name was Ernest.
+
+'Mother,' said he, while the Titanic visage miled on him, 'I wish that
+it could speak, for it looks so very kindly that its voice must needs
+be pleasant. If I were to See a man with such a face, I should love him
+dearly.' 'If an old prophecy should come to pass,' answered his mother,
+'we may see a man, some time for other, with exactly such a face as
+that.' 'What prophecy do you mean, dear mother?' eagerly inquired
+Ernest. 'Pray tell me all about it!'
+
+So his mother told him a story that her own mother had told to her, when
+she herself was younger than little Ernest; a story, not of things that
+were past, but of what was yet to come; a story, nevertheless, so very
+old, that even the Indians, who formerly inhabited this valley, had
+heard it from their forefathers, to whom, as they affirmed, it had been
+murmured by the mountain streams, and whispered by the wind among the
+tree-tops. The purport was, that, at some future day, a child should
+be born hereabouts, who was destined to become the greatest and noblest
+personage of his time, and whose countenance, in manhood, should bear
+an exact resemblance to the Great Stone Face. Not a few old-fashioned
+people, and young ones likewise, in the ardor of their hopes, still
+cherished an enduring faith in this old prophecy. But others, who had
+seen more of the world, had watched and waited till they were weary, and
+had beheld no man with such a face, nor any man that proved to be much
+greater or nobler than his neighbors, concluded it to be nothing but
+an idle tale. At all events, the great man of the prophecy had not yet
+appeared.
+
+'O mother, dear mother!' cried Ernest, clapping his hands above his head,
+'I do hope that I shall live to see him!'
+
+His mother was an affectionate and thoughtful woman, and felt that it
+was wisest not to discourage the generous hopes of her little boy. So
+she only said to him, 'Perhaps you may.'
+
+And Ernest never forgot the story that his mother told him. It was
+always in his mind, whenever he looked upon the Great Stone Face.
+He spent his childhood in the log-cottage where he was born, and was
+dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in many things, assisting
+her much with his little hands, and more with his loving heart. In this
+manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, he grew up to be a mild,
+quiet, unobtrusive boy, and sun-browned with labor in the fields, but
+with more intelligence brightening his aspect than is seen in many lads
+who have been taught at famous schools. Yet Ernest had had no teacher,
+save only that the Great Stone Face became one to him. When the toil
+of the day was over, he would gaze at it for hours, until he began to
+imagine that those vast features recognized him, and gave him a smile of
+kindness and encouragement, responsive to his own look of veneration.
+We must not take upon us to affirm that this was a mistake, although
+the Face may have looked no more kindly at Ernest than at all the
+world besides. But the secret was that the boy's tender and confiding
+simplicity discerned what other people could not see; and thus the love,
+which was meant for all, became his peculiar portion.
+
+About this time there went a rumor throughout the valley, that the great
+man, foretold from ages long ago, who was to bear a resemblance to
+the Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems that, many years
+before, a young man had migrated from the valley and settled at a
+distant seaport, where, after getting together a little money, he had
+set up as a shopkeeper. His name but I could never learn whether it was
+his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success
+in life--was Gathergold.
+
+Being shrewd and active, and endowed by Providence with that inscrutable
+faculty which develops itself in what the world calls luck, he became an
+exceedingly rich merchant, and owner of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomed
+ships. All the countries of the globe appeared to join hands for the
+mere purpose of adding heap after heap to the mountainous accumulation
+of this one man's wealth. The cold regions of the north, almost within
+the gloom and shadow of the Arctic Circle, sent him their tribute in the
+shape of furs; hot Africa sifted for him the golden sands of her rivers,
+and gathered up the ivory tusks of her great elephants out of the
+forests; the east came bringing him the rich shawls, and spices, and
+teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity of large
+pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her
+mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a
+profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold
+within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of Midas, in the fable,
+that whatever he touched with his finger immediately glistened, and grew
+yellow, and was changed at once into sterling metal, or, which suited
+him still better, into piles of coin. And, when Mr. Gathergold had
+become so very rich that it would have taken him a hundred years only
+to count his wealth, he bethought himself of his native valley, and
+resolved to go back thither, and end his days where he was born. With
+this purpose in view, he sent a skilful architect to build him such a
+palace as should be fit for a man of his vast wealth to live in.
+
+As I have said above, it had already been rumored in the valley that
+Mr. Gathergold had turned out to be the prophetic personage so long and
+vainly looked for, and that his visage was the perfect and undeniable
+similitude of the Great Stone Face. People were the more ready to
+believe that this must needs be the fact, when they beheld the splendid
+edifice that rose, as if by enchantment, on the site of his father's
+old weather-beaten farmhouse. The exterior was of marble, so dazzlingly
+white that it seemed as though the whole structure might melt away in
+the sunshine, like those humbler ones which Mr. Gathergold, in his
+young play-days, before his fingers were gifted with the touch of
+transmutation, had been accustomed to build of snow. It had a richly
+ornamented portico supported by tall pillars, beneath which was a lofty
+door, studded with silver knobs, and made of a kind of variegated wood
+that had been brought from beyond the sea. The windows, from the floor
+to the ceiling of each stately apartment, were composed, respectively
+of but one enormous pane of glass, so transparently pure that it was
+said to be a finer medium than even the vacant atmosphere. Hardly
+anybody had been permitted to see the interior of this palace; but it
+was reported, and with good semblance of truth, to be far more gorgeous
+than the outside, insomuch that whatever was iron or brass in other
+houses was silver or gold in this; and Mr. Gathergold's bedchamber,
+especially, made such a glittering appearance that no ordinary man would
+have been able to close his eyes there. But, on the other hand, Mr.
+Gathergold was now so inured to wealth, that perhaps he could not have
+closed his eyes unless where the gleam of it was certain to find its way
+beneath his eyelids.
+
+In due time, the mansion was finished; next came the upholsterers, with
+magnificent furniture; then, a whole troop of black and white servants,
+the haringers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majestic person, was
+expected to arrive at sunset. Our friend Ernest, meanwhile, had been
+deeply stirred by the idea that the great man, the noble man, the man of
+prophecy, after so many ages of delay, was at length to be made manifest
+to his native valley. He knew, boy as he was, that there were a thousand
+ways in which Mr. Gathergold, with his vast wealth, might transform
+himself into an angel of beneficence, and assume a control over human
+affairs as wide and benignant as the smile of the Great Stone Face.
+Full of faith and hope, Ernest doubted not that what the people said
+was true, and that now he was to behold the living likeness of those
+wondrous features on the mountainside. While the boy was still gazing
+up the valley, and fancying, as he always did, that the Great Stone Face
+returned his gaze and looked kindly at him, the rumbling of wheels was
+heard, approaching swiftly along the winding road.
+
+'Here he comes!' cried a group of people who were assembled to witness
+the arrival. 'Here comes the great Mr. Gathergold!'
+
+A carriage, drawn by four horses, dashed round the turn of the road.
+Within it, thrust partly out of the window, appeared the physiognomy
+of the old man, with a skin as yellow as if his own Midas-hand had
+transmuted it. He had a low forehead, small, sharp eyes, puckered about
+with innumerable wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he made still
+thinner by pressing them forcibly together.
+
+'The very image or the Great Stone Face!' shouted the people. 'Sure
+enough, the old prophecy is true; and here we have the great man come,
+at last!'
+
+And, what greatly perplexed Ernest, they seemed actually to believe that
+here was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced
+to be an old beggar woman and two little beggar-children, stragglers
+from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held
+out their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously
+beseeching charity. A yellow claw the very same that had dawed together
+so much wealth--poked itself out of the coach-window, and dropt some
+copper coins upon the ground; so that, though the great man's name seems
+to have been Gathergold, he might just as suitably have been nicknamed
+Scattercopper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest shout, and evidently
+with as much good faith as ever, the people bellowed 'He is the very
+image of the Great Stone Face!' But Ernest turned sadly from the
+wrinkled shrewdness of that sordid visage, and gazed up the valley,
+where, amid a gathering mist, gilded by the last sunbeams, he could
+still distinguish those glorious features which had impressed themselves
+into his soul. Their aspect cheered him. What did the benign lips seem
+to say?
+
+'He will come! Fear not, Ernest; the man will come!'
+
+The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a boy. He had grown to be a
+young man now. He attracted little notice from the other inhabitants
+of the valley; for they saw nothing remarkable in his way of life, save
+that, when the labor of the day was over, he still loved to go apart and
+gaze and meditate upon the Great Stone Face. According to their idea of
+the matter, it was a folly, indeed, but pardonable, inasmuch as Ernest
+was industrious, kind, and neighborly, and neglected no duty for the
+sake of indulging this idle habit. They knew not that the Great Stone
+Face had become a teacher to him, and that the sentiment which was
+expressed in it would enlarge the young man's heart, and fill it with
+wider and deeper sympathies than other hearts. They knew not that thence
+would come a better wisdom than could be learned from books, and a
+better life than could be moulded on the defaced example of other human
+lives. Neither did Ernest know that the thoughts and affections which
+came to him so naturally, in the fields and at the fireside, and
+wherever he communed with himself, were of a higher tone than those
+which all men shared with him. A simple soul--simple as when his mother
+first taught him the old prophecy--he beheld the marvellous features
+beaming adown the valley, and still wondered that their human
+counterpart was so long in making his appearance.
+
+By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and buried; and the oddest
+part of the matter was, that his wealth, which was the body and spirit
+of his existence, had disappeared before his death, leaving nothing of
+him but a living skeleton, covered over with a wrinkled, yellow skin.
+Since the melting away of his gold, it had been very generally conceded
+that there was no such striking resemblance, after all, betwixt the
+ignoble features of the ruined merchant and that majestic face upon the
+mountainside. So the people ceased to honor him during his lifetime,
+and quietly consigned him to forgetfulness after his decease. Once in
+a while, it is true, his memory was brought up in connection with the
+magnificent palace which he had built, and which had long ago been
+turned into a hotel for the accommodation of strangers, multitudes of
+whom came, every summer, to visit that famous natural curiosity, the
+Great Stone Face. Thus, Mr. Gathergold being discredited and thrown into
+the shade, the man of prophecy was yet to come.
+
+It so happened that a native-born son of the valley, many years before,
+had enlisted as a soldier, and, after a great deal of hard fighting,
+had now become an illustrious commander. Whatever he may be called in
+history, he was known in camps and on the battlefield under the nickname
+of Old Blood-and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now infirm with
+age and wounds, and weary of the turmoil of a military life, and of the
+roll of the drum and the clangor of the trumpet, that had so long been
+ringing in his ears, had lately signified a purpose of returning to his
+native valley, hoping to find repose where he remembered to have left
+it. The inhabitants, his old neighbors and their grown-up children, were
+resolved to welcome the renowned warrior with a salute of cannon and a
+public dinner; and all the more enthusiastically, it being affirmed
+that now, at last, the likeness of the Great Stone Face had actually
+appeared. An aid-de-camp of Old Blood-and-Thunder, travelling through
+the valley, was said to have been struck with the resemblance. Moreover
+the schoolmates and early acquaintances of the general were ready to
+testify, on oath, that, to the best of their recollection, the aforesaid
+general had been exceedingly like the majestic image, even when a boy,
+only that the idea had never occurred to them at that period. Great,
+therefore, was the excitement throughout the valley; and many people,
+who had never once thought of glancing at the Great Stone Face for years
+before, now spent their time in gazing at it, for the sake of knowing
+exactly how General Blood-and-Thunder looked.
+
+On the day of the great festival, Ernest, with all the other people of
+the valley, left their work, and proceeded to the spot where the sylvan
+banquet was prepared. As he approached, the loud voice of the Rev. Dr.
+Battleblast was heard, beseeching a blessing on the good things set
+before them, and on the distinguished friend of peace in whose honor
+they were assembled. The tables were arranged in a cleared space of the
+woods, shut in by the surrounding trees, except where a vista opened
+eastward, and afforded a distant view of the Great Stone Face. Over the
+general's chair, which was a relic from the home of Washington, there
+was an arch of verdant boughs, with the laurel profusely intermixed,
+and surmounted by his country's banner, beneath which he had won his
+victories. Our friend Ernest raised himself on his tiptoes, in hopes
+to get a glimpse of the celebrated guest; but there was a mighty crowd
+about the tables anxious to hear the toasts and speeches, and to catch
+any word that might fall from the general in reply; and a volunteer
+company, doing duty as a guard, pricked ruthlessly with their bayonets
+at any particularly quiet person among the throng. So Ernest, being of
+an unobtrusive character, was thrust quite into the background, where he
+could see no more of Old Blood-and-Thunder's physiognomy than if it had
+been still blazing on the battlefield. To console himself, he turned
+towards the Great Stone Face, which, like a faithful and long-remembered
+friend, looked back and smiled upon him through the vista of the forest.
+Meantime, however, he could overhear the remarks of various individuals,
+who were comparing the features of the hero with the face on the distant
+mountainside.
+
+''T is the same face, to a hair!' cried one man, cutting a caper for joy.
+
+'Wonderfully like, that's a fact!' responded another.
+
+'Like! why, I call it Old Blood-and-Thunder himself, in a monstrous
+looking-glass!' cried a third.
+
+'And why not? He's the greatest man of this or any other age, beyond a
+doubt.'
+
+And then all three of the speakers gave a great shout, which
+communicated electricity to the crowd, and called forth a roar from a
+thousand voices, that went reverberating for miles among the mountains,
+until you might have supposed that the Great Stone Face had poured
+its thunder-breath into the cry. All these comments, and this vast
+enthusiasm, served the more to interest our friend; nor did he think of
+questioning that now, at length, the mountain-visage had found its human
+counterpart. It is true, Ernest had imagined that this long-looked-for
+personage would appear in the character of a man of peace, uttering
+wisdom, and doing good, and making people happy. But, taking an habitual
+breadth of view, with all his simplicity, he contended that providence
+should choose its own method of blessing mankind, and could conceive
+that this great end might be effected even by a warrior and a bloody
+sword, should inscrutable wisdom see fit to order matters SO.
+
+'The general! the general!' was now the cry. 'Hush! silence! Old
+Blood-and-Thunder's going to make a speech.'
+
+Even so; for, the cloth being removed, the general's health had been
+drunk, amid shouts of applause, and he now stood upon his feet to thank
+the company. Ernest saw him. There he was, over the shoulders of the
+crowd, from the two glittering epaulets and embroidered collar upward,
+beneath the arch of green boughs with intertwined laurel, and the banner
+drooping as if to shade his brow! And there, too, visible in the same
+glance, through the vista of the forest, appeared the Great Stone Face!
+And was there, indeed, such a resemblance as the crowd had testified?
+Alas, Ernest could not recognize it! He beheld a war-worn and
+weather-beaten countenance, full of energy, and expressive of an iron
+will; but the gentle wisdom, the deep, broad, tender sympathies, were
+altogether wanting in Old Blood-and-Thunder's visage; and even if the
+Great Stone Face had assumed his look of stern command, the milder
+traits would still have tempered it.
+
+'This is not the man of prophecy,' sighed Ernest to himself, as he made
+his way out of the throng. 'And must the world wait longer yet?'
+
+The mists had congregated about the distant mountainside, and there were
+seen the grand and awful features of the Great Stone Face, awful but
+benignant, as if a mighty angel were sitting among the hills, and
+enrobing himself in a cloud-vesture of gold and purple. As he looked,
+Ernest could hardly believe but that a smile beamed over the whole
+visage, with a radiance still brightening, although without motion of
+the lips. It was probably the effect of the western sunshine, melting
+through the thinly diffused vapors that had swept between him and
+the object that he gazed at. But--as it always did--the aspect of his
+marvellous friend made Ernest as hopeful as if he had never hoped in
+vain.
+
+'Fear not, Ernest,' said his heart, even as if the Great Face were
+whispering him--'fear not, Ernest; he will come.'
+
+More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. Ernest still dwelt in
+his native valley, and was now a man of middle age. By imperceptible
+degrees, he had become known among the people. Now, as heretofore, he
+labored for his bread, and was the same simple-hearted man that he had
+always been. But he had thought and felt so much, he had given so many
+of the best hours of his life to unworldly hopes for some great good to
+mankind, that it seemed as though he had been talking with the angels,
+and had imbibed a portion of their wisdom unawares. It was visible in
+the calm and well-considered beneficence of his daily life, the quiet
+stream of which had made a wide green margin all along its course. Not
+a day passed by, that the world was not the better because this man,
+humble as he was, had lived. He never stepped aside from his own path,
+yet would always reach a blessing to his neighbor. Almost involuntarily,
+too, he had become a preacher. The pure and high simplicity of his
+thought, which, as one of its manifestations, took shape in the good
+deeds that dropped silently from his hand, flowed also forth in speech.
+He uttered truths that wrought upon and moulded the lives of those who
+heard him. His auditors, it may be, never suspected that Ernest, their
+own neighbor and familiar friend, was more than an ordinary man; least
+of all did Ernest himself suspect it; but, inevitably as the murmur of
+a rivulet, came thoughts out of his mouth that no other human lips had
+spoken.
+
+When the people's minds had had a little time to cool, they were ready
+enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between
+General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and the benign visage
+on the mountain-side. But now, again, there were reports and many
+paragraphs in the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the Great
+Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain eminent
+statesman. He, like Mr. Gathergold and old Blood-and-Thunder, was a
+native of the valley, but had left it in his early days, and taken up
+the trades of law and politics. Instead of the rich man's wealth and
+the warrior's sword, he had but a tongue, and it was mightier than both
+together. So wonderfully eloquent was he, that whatever he might choose
+to say, his auditors had no choice but to believe him; wrong looked like
+right, and right like wrong; for when it pleased him, he could make a
+kind of illuminated fog with his mere breath, and obscure the natural
+daylight with it. His tongue, indeed, was a magic instrument: sometimes
+it rumbled like the thunder; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest
+music. It was the blast of war--the song of peace; and it seemed to have
+a heart in it, when there was no such matter. In good truth, he was a
+wondrous man; and when his tongue had acquired him all other imaginable
+success--when it had been heard in halls of state, and in the courts of
+princes and potentates--after it had made him known all over the world,
+even as a voice crying from shore to shore--it finally persuaded his
+countrymen to select him for the Presidency. Before this time--indeed,
+as soon as he began to grow celebrated--his admirers had found out the
+resemblance between him and the Great Stone Face; and so much were they
+struck by it, that throughout the country this distinguished gentleman
+was known by the name of Old Stony Phiz. The phrase was considered as
+giving a highly favorable aspect to his political prospects; for, as
+is likewise the case with the Popedom, nobody ever becomes President
+without taking a name other than his own.
+
+While his friends were doing their best to make him President, Old Stony
+Phiz, as he was called, set out on a visit to the valley where he was
+born. Of course, he had no other object than to shake hands with his
+fellow-citizens, and neither thought nor cared about any effect
+which his progress through the country might have upon the election.
+Magnificent preparations were made to receive the illustrious statesman;
+a cavalcade of horsemen set forth to meet him at the boundary line of
+the State, and all the people left their business and gathered along the
+wayside to see him pass. Among these was Ernest. Though more than once
+disappointed, as we have seen, he had such a hopeful and confiding
+nature, that he was always ready to believe in whatever seemed beautiful
+and good.
+
+He kept his heart continually open, and thus was sure to catch the
+blessing from on high when it should come. So now again, as buoyantly as
+ever, he went forth to behold the likeness of the Great Stone Face.
+
+The cavalcade came prancing along the road, with a great clattering of
+hoofs and a mighty cloud of dust, which rose up so dense and high that
+the visage of the mountainside was completely hidden from Ernest's eyes.
+All the great men of the neighborhood were there on horseback; militia
+officers, in uniform; the member of Congress; the sheriff of the county;
+the editors of newspapers; and many a farmer, too, had mounted his
+patient steed, with his Sunday coat upon his back. It really was a very
+brilliant spectacle, especially as there were numerous banners flaunting
+over the cavalcade, on some of which were gorgeous portraits of the
+illustrious statesman and the Great Stone Face, smiling familiarly at
+one another, like two brothers. If the pictures were to be trusted, the
+mutual resemblance, it must be confessed, was marvellous. We must not
+forget to mention that there was a band of music, which made the echoes
+of the mountains ring and reverberate with the loud triumph of its
+strains; so that airy and soul-thrilling melodies broke out among all
+the heights and hollows, as if every nook of his native valley had found
+a voice, to welcome the distinguished guest. But the grandest effect was
+when the far-off mountain precipice flung back the music; for then the
+Great Stone Face itself seemed to be swelling the triumphant chorus, in
+acknowledgment, that, at length, the man of prophecy was come.
+
+All this while the people were throwing up their hats and shouting, with
+enthusiasm so contagious that the heart of Ernest kindled up, and he
+likewise threw up his hat, and shouted, as loudly as the loudest, 'Huzza
+for the great man! Huzza for Old Stony Phiz!' But as yet he had not seen
+him.
+
+'Here he is, now!' cried those who stood near Ernest. 'There! There!
+Look at Old Stony Phiz and then at the Old Man of the Mountain, and see
+if they are not as like as two twin brothers!'
+
+In the midst of all this gallant array came an open barouche, drawn by
+four white horses; and in the barouche, with his massive head uncovered,
+sat the illustrious statesman, Old Stony Phiz himself.
+
+'Confess it,' said one of Ernest's neighbors to him, 'the Great Stone
+Face has met its match at last!'
+
+Now, it must be owned that, at his first glimpse of the countenance
+which was bowing and smiling from the barouche, Ernest did fancy that
+there was a resemblance between it and the old familiar face upon the
+mountainside. The brow, with its massive depth and loftiness, and all
+the other features, indeed, were boldly and strongly hewn, as if in
+emulation of a more than heroic, of a Titanic model. But the sublimity
+and stateliness, the grand expression of a divine sympathy, that
+illuminated the mountain visage and etherealized its ponderous granite
+substance into spirit, might here be sought in vain. Something had been
+originally left out, or had departed. And therefore the marvellously
+gifted statesman had always a weary gloom in the deep caverns of his
+eyes, as of a child that has outgrown its playthings or a man of mighty
+faculties and little aims, whose life, with all its high performances,
+was vague and empty, because no high purpose had endowed it with
+reality.
+
+Still, Ernest's neighbor was thrusting his elbow into his side, and
+pressing him for an answer.
+
+'Confess! confess! Is not he the very picture of your Old Man of the
+Mountain?'
+
+'No!' said Ernest, bluntly, 'I see little or no likeness.'
+
+'Then so much the worse for the Great Stone Face!' answered his
+neighbor; and again he set up a shout for Old Stony Phiz.
+
+But Ernest turned away, melancholy, and almost despondent: for this
+was the saddest of his disappointments, to behold a man who might have
+fulfilled the prophecy, and had not willed to do so. Meantime, the
+cavalcade, the banners, the music, and the barouches swept past him,
+with the vociferous crowd in the rear, leaving the dust to settle down,
+and the Great Stone Face to be revealed again, with the grandeur that it
+had worn for untold centuries.
+
+'Lo, here I am, Ernest!' the benign lips seemed to say. 'I have waited
+longer than thou, and am not yet weary. Fear not; the man will come.'
+
+The years hurried onward, treading in their haste on one another's
+heels. And now they began to bring white hairs, and scatter them over
+the head of Ernest; they made reverend wrinkles across his forehead, and
+furrows in his cheeks. He was an aged man. But not in vain had he grown
+old: more than the white hairs on his head were the sage thoughts in his
+mind; his wrinkles and furrows were inscriptions that Time had graved,
+and in which he had written legends of wisdom that had been tested by
+the tenor of a life. And Ernest had ceased to be obscure. Unsought for,
+undesired, had come the fame which so many seek, and made him known in
+the great world, beyond the limits of the valley in which he had dwelt
+so quietly. College professors, and even the active men of cities, came
+from far to see and converse with Ernest; for the report had gone abroad
+that this simple husbandman had ideas unlike those of other men,
+not gained from books, but of a higher tone--a tranquil and familiar
+majesty, as if he had been talking with the angels as his daily friends.
+Whether it were sage, statesman, or philanthropist, Ernest received
+these visitors with the gentle sincerity that had characterized him from
+boyhood, and spoke freely with them of whatever came uppermost, or lay
+deepest in his heart or their own. While they talked together, his face
+would kindle, unawares, and shine upon them, as with a mild evening
+light. Pensive with the fulness of such discourse, his guests took leave
+and went their way; and passing up the valley, paused to look at the
+Great Stone Face, imagining that they had seen its likeness in a human
+countenance, but could not remember where.
+
+While Ernest had been growing up and growing old, a bountiful Providence
+had granted a new poet to this earth. He, likewise, was a native of the
+valley, but had spent the greater part of his life at a distance from
+that romantic region, pouring out his sweet music amid the bustle and
+din of cities. Often, however, did the mountains which had been familiar
+to him in his childhood lift their snowy peaks into the clear atmosphere
+of his poetry. Neither was the Great Stone Face forgotten, for the poet
+had celebrated it in an ode, which was grand enough to have been uttered
+by its own majestic lips. This man of genius, we may say, had come down
+from heaven with wonderful endowments. If he sang of a mountain, the
+eyes of all mankind beheld a mightier grandeur reposing on its breast,
+or soaring to its summit, than had before been seen there. If his theme
+were a lovely lake, a celestial smile had now been thrown over it, to
+gleam forever on its surface. If it were the vast old sea, even the deep
+immensity of its dread bosom seemed to swell the higher, as if moved by
+the emotions of the song. Thus the world assumed another and a better
+aspect from the hour that the poet blessed it with his happy eyes. The
+Creator had bestowed him, as the last best touch to his own handiwork.
+Creation was not finished till the poet came to interpret, and so
+complete it.
+
+The effect was no less high and beautiful, when his human brethren were
+the subject of his verse. The man or woman, sordid with the common dust
+of life, who crossed his daily path, and the little child who played in
+it, were glorified if they beheld him in his mood of poetic faith. He
+showed the golden links of the great chain that intertwined them with an
+angelic kindred; he brought out the hidden traits of a celestial birth
+that made them worthy of such kin. Some, indeed, there were, who thought
+to show the soundness of their judgment by affirming that all the beauty
+and dignity of the natural world existed only in the poet's fancy.
+Let such men speak for themselves, who undoubtedly appear to have been
+spawned forth by Nature with a contemptuous bitterness; she plastered
+them up out of her refuse stuff, after all the swine were made. As
+respects all things else, the poet's ideal was the truest truth.
+
+The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. He read them after his
+customary toil, seated on the bench before his cottage-door, where for
+such a length of time he had filled his repose with thought, by gazing
+at the Great Stone Face. And now as he read stanzas that caused the soul
+to thrill within him, he lifted his eyes to the vast countenance beaming
+on him so benignantly.
+
+'O majestic friend,' he murmured, addressing the Great Stone Face, 'is
+not this man worthy to resemble thee?'
+
+The face seemed to smile, but answered not a word.
+
+Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt so far away, had not only
+heard of Ernest, but had meditated much upon his character, until he
+deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, whose untaught wisdom
+walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of his life.
+
+One summer morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and,
+in the decline of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great
+distance from Ernest's cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly been
+the palace of Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, with
+his carpetbag on his arm, inquired at once where Ernest dwelt, and was
+resolved to be accepted as his guest.
+
+Approaching the door, he there found the good old man, holding a volume
+in his hand, which alternately he read, and then, with a finger between
+the leaves, looked lovingly at the Great Stone Face.
+
+'Good evening,' said the poet. 'Can you give a traveller a night's
+lodging?'
+
+'Willingly,' answered Ernest; and then he added, smiling, 'Methinks I
+never saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger.'
+
+The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and Ernest talked
+together. Often had the poet held intercourse with the wittiest and
+the wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughts
+and feelings gushed up with such a natural feeling, and who made great
+truths so familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, as had
+been so often said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labor in
+the fields; angels seemed to have sat with him by the fireside;
+and, dwelling with angels as friend with friends, he had imbibed the
+sublimity of their ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and lowly charm
+of household words. So thought the poet. And Ernest, on the other hand,
+was moved and agitated by the living images which the poet flung out
+of his mind, and which peopled all the air about the cottage-door with
+shapes of beauty, both gay and pensive. The sympathies of these two men
+instructed them with a profounder sense than either could have attained
+alone. Their minds accorded into one strain, and made delightful
+music which neither of them could have claimed as all his own, nor
+distinguished his own share from the other's. They led one another, as
+it were, into a high pavilion of their thoughts, so remote, and hitherto
+so dim, that they had never entered it before, and so beautiful that
+they desired to be there always.
+
+As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that the Great Stone Face
+was bending forward to listen too. He gazed earnestly into the poet's
+glowing eyes.
+
+'Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?' he said.
+
+The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been reading.
+
+'You have read these poems,' said he. 'You know me, then--for I wrote
+them.'
+
+Again, and still more earnestly than before, Ernest examined the poet's
+features; then turned towards the Great Stone Face; then back, with an
+uncertain aspect, to his guest. But his countenance fell; he shook his
+head, and sighed.
+
+'Wherefore are you sad?' inquired the poet. 'Because,' replied Ernest,
+'all through life I have awaited the fulfilment of a prophecy; and, when
+I read these poems, I hoped that it might be fulfilled in you.'
+
+'You hoped,' answered the poet, faintly smiling, 'to find in me the
+likeness of the Great Stone Face. And you are disappointed, as formerly
+with Mr. Gathergold, and old Blood-and-Thunder, and Old Stony Phiz. Yes,
+Ernest, it is my doom.
+
+You must add my name to the illustrious three, and record another
+failure of your hopes. For--in shame and sadness do I speak it,
+Ernest--I am not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and majestic
+image.'
+
+'And why?' asked Ernest. He pointed to the volume. 'Are not those
+thoughts divine?'
+
+'They have a strain of the Divinity,' replied the poet. 'You can hear in
+them the far-off echo of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, has
+not corresponded with my thought. I have had grand dreams, but they have
+been only dreams, because I have lived--and that, too, by my own choice
+among poor and mean realities. Sometimes, even--shall I dare to say
+it?---I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the goodness, which
+my own works are said to have made more evident in nature and in human
+life. Why, then, pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst thou hope to
+find me, in yonder image of the divine?'
+
+The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears. So, likewise,
+were those of Ernest.
+
+At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest was
+to discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the open
+air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went
+along, proceeded to the spot. It was a small nook among the hills, with
+a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the
+pleasant foliage of many creeping plants that made a tapestry for the
+naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a
+small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure,
+there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with
+freedom for such gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought and
+genuine emotion. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a
+look of familiar kindness around upon his audience. They stood, or sat,
+or reclined upon the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing
+sunshine falling obliquely over them, and mingling its subdued
+cheerfulness with the solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, beneath and
+amid the boughs of which the golden rays were constrained to pass. In
+another direction was seen the Great Stone Face, with the same cheer,
+combined with the same solemnity, in its benignant aspect.
+
+Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in his heart
+and mind. His words had power, because they accorded with his thoughts;
+and his thoughts had reality and depth, because they harmonized with
+the life which he had always lived. It was not mere breath that this
+preacher uttered; they were the words of life, because a life of good
+deeds and holy love was melted into them. Pearls, pure and rich, had
+been dissolved into this precious draught. The poet, as he listened,
+felt that the being and character of Ernest were a nobler strain of
+poetry than he had ever written.
+
+His eyes glistening with tears, he gazed reverentially at the venerable
+man, and said within himself that never was there an aspect so worthy of
+a prophet and a sage as that mild, sweet, thoughtful countenance, with
+the glory of white hair diffused about it. At a distance, but distinctly
+to be seen, high up in the golden light of the setting sun, appeared
+the Great Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the white hairs
+around the brow of Ernest. Its look of grand beneficence seemed to
+embrace the world.
+
+At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter,
+the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued with
+benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his arms
+aloft and shouted--
+
+'Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone
+Face!'
+
+Then all the people looked and saw that what the deep-sighted poet said
+was true. The prophecy was fulfilled. But Ernest, having finished what
+he had to say, took the poet's arm, and walked slowly homeward, still
+hoping that some wiser and better man than himself would by and by
+appear, bearing a resemblance to the GREAT STONE FACE.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE AMBITIOUS GUEST
+
+One September night a family had gathered round their hearth, and piled
+it high with the driftwood of mountain streams, the dry cones of the
+pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing
+down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the
+room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a
+sober gladness; the children laughed; the eldest daughter was the image
+of Happiness at seventeen; and the aged grandmother who sat knitting in
+the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old. They had found
+the 'herb, heart's-ease,' in the bleakest spot of all New England. (This
+family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills, where the wind
+was sharp throughout the year, and pitilessly cold in the winter--giving
+their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it descended on the
+valley of the Saco) They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one; for
+a mountain towered above their heads, so steep, that the stones would
+often rumble down its sides and startle them at midnight.
+
+The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all with
+mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause
+before their cottage--rattling the door, with a sound of wailing and
+lamentation, before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened
+them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family
+were glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some
+traveller, whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which
+heralded his approach, and wailed as he was entering, and went moaning
+away from the door.
+
+Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse
+with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery,
+through which the life-blood of internal commerce is continually
+throbbing between Maine, on one side, and the Green Mountains and the
+shores of the St. Lawrence, on the other. The stage-coach always drew up
+before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer, with no companion but
+his staff, paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness
+might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft
+of the mountain, or reach the first house in the valley. And here the
+teamster, on his way to Portland market, would put up for the night;
+and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime, and
+steal a kiss from the mountain maid at parting. It was one of those
+primitive taverns where the traveller pays only for food and lodging,
+but meets with a homely kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps
+were heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the
+whole family rose up, grandmother, children, and all, as if about to
+welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with
+theirs.
+
+The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the
+melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild and
+bleak road, at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he saw
+the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring forward to
+meet them all, from the old woman, who wiped a chair with her apron,
+to the little child that held out its arms to him. One glance and smile
+placed the stranger on a footing of innocent familiarity with the eldest
+daughter.
+
+'Ah, this fire is the right thing!' cried he; 'especially when there is
+such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed; for the Notch is
+just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible
+blast in my face all the way from Bartlett.'
+
+'Then you are going towards Vermont?' said the master of the house, as
+he helped to take a light knapsack off the young man's shoulders.
+
+'Yes; to Burlington, and far enough beyond,' replied he. 'I meant to
+have been at Ethan Crawford's tonight; but a pedestrian lingers along
+such a road as this. It is no matter; for, when I saw this good fire,
+and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose
+for me, and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you, and
+make myself at home.'
+
+The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when
+something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the
+steep side of the mountain, as with long and rapid strides, and taking
+such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice.
+The family held their breath, because they knew the sound, and their
+guest held his by instinct.
+
+'The old mountain has thrown a stone at us, for fear we should forget
+him,' said the landlord, recovering himself. 'He sometimes nods his head
+and threatens to come down; but we are old neighbors, and agree together
+pretty well upon the whole. Besides we have a sure place of refuge hard
+by if he should be coming in good earnest.'
+
+Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's
+meat; and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed himself
+on a footing of kindness with the whole family, so that they talked as
+freely together as if he belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a
+proud, yet gentle spirit--haughty and reserved among the rich and great;
+but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door, and be like
+a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside. In the household of
+the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading
+intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth, which they
+had gathered when they little thought of it from the mountain peaks and
+chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode.
+He had travelled far and alone; his whole life, indeed, had been a
+solitary path; for, with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept
+himself apart from those who might otherwise have been his companions.
+The family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness
+of unity among themselves, and separation from the world at large,
+which, in every domestic circle, should still keep a holy place where no
+stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled
+the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple
+mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free
+confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a common
+fate a closer tie than that of birth?
+
+The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted
+ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not
+to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed
+to hope; and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty,
+that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his
+pathway--though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when
+posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present,
+they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner
+glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle
+to his tomb with none to recognize him.
+
+'As yet,' cried the stranger--his cheek glowing and his eye flashing
+with enthusiasm--'as yet, I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from the
+earth tomorrow, none would know so much of me as you: that a nameless
+youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and opened his
+heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch by sunrise,
+and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, 'Who was he? Whither did the
+wanderer go? But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny. Then,
+let Death come! I shall have built my monument!'
+
+There was a continual flow of natural emotion, gushing forth amid
+abstracted reverie, which enabled the family to understand this
+young man's sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick
+sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had
+been betrayed.
+
+'You laugh at me,' said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand, and
+laughing himself. 'You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to
+freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington, only that people
+might spy at me from the country round about. And, truly, that would be
+a noble pedestal for a man's statue!'
+
+'It is better to sit here by this fire,' answered the girl, blushing,
+'and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us.'
+
+'I suppose,' Said her father, after a fit of musing, 'there is
+something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been
+turned that way, I might have felt just the same. It is strange, wife,
+how his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty certain
+never to come to pass.'
+
+'Perhaps they may,' observed the wife. 'Is the man thinking what he will
+do when he is a widower?'
+
+'No, no!' cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness. 'When
+I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine, too. But I was wishing
+we had a good farm in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Littleton, or some
+other township round the White Mountains; but not where they could
+tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors and
+be called Squire, and sent to General Court for a term or two; for a
+plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer. And when I
+should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman, so as not to be
+long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you all
+crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble
+one--with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and something to
+let people know that I lived an honest man and died a Christian.'
+
+'There now!' exclaimed the stranger; 'it is our nature to desire a
+monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious
+memory in the universal heart of man.'
+
+'We're in a strange way, tonight,' said the wife, with tears in her
+eyes. 'They say it's a sign of something, when folks' minds go a
+wandering so. Hark to the children!'
+
+They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in
+another room, but with an open door between, so that they could be heard
+talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the
+infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each other in wild
+wishes, and childish projects of what they would do when they came to
+be men and women. At length a little boy, instead of addressing his
+brothers and sisters, called out to his mother.
+
+'I'll tell you what I wish, mother,' cried he. 'I want you and father
+and grandma'm, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start right away,
+and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume!'
+
+Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leaving a warm
+bed, and dragging them from a cheerful fire, to visit the basin of the
+Flume--a brook, which tumbles over the precipice, deep within the Notch.
+The boy had hardly spoken when a wagon rattled along the road, and
+stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three
+men, who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song,
+which resounded, in broken notes, between the cliffs, while the singers
+hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the
+night.
+
+'Father,' said the girl, 'they are calling you by name.'
+
+But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was
+unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to
+patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door; and the
+lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, still
+singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily
+from the heart of the mountain.
+
+'There, mother!' cried the boy, again. 'They'd have given us a ride to
+the Flume.'
+
+Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy for a night ramble.
+But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter's spirit;
+she looked gravely into the fire, and drew a breath that was almost a
+sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little struggle to repress it.
+Then starting and blushing, she looked quickly round the circle, as if
+they had caught a glimpse into her bosom. The stranger asked what she
+had been thinking of.
+
+'Nothing,' answered she, with a downcast smile. 'Only I felt lonesome
+just then.'
+
+'Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people's
+hearts,' said he, half seriously. 'Shall I tell the secrets of yours?
+For I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth,
+and complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these
+feelings into words?'
+
+'They would not be a girl's feelings any longer if they could be put
+into words,' replied the mountain nymph, laughing, but avoiding his eye.
+
+All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their
+hearts, so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be
+matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his; and
+the proud, contemplative, yet kindly soul is oftenest captivated by
+simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching
+the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings of a
+maiden's nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier
+sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain
+of the spirits of the blast, who in old Indian times had their dwelling
+among these mountains, and made their heights and recesses a sacred
+region. There was a wail along the road, as if a funeral were passing.
+To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine branches on their fire,
+till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again
+a scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about them
+fondly, and caressed them all. There were the little faces of the
+children, peeping from their bed apart, and here the father's frame of
+strength, the mother's subdued and careful mien, the high-browed youth,
+the budding girl, and the good old grandam, still knitting in the
+warmest place. The aged woman looked up from her task, and, with fingers
+ever busy, was the next to speak.
+
+'Old folks have their notions,' said she, 'as well as young ones. You've
+been wishing and planning; and letting your heads run on one thing and
+another, till you've set my mind a wandering too. Now what should an old
+woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before she comes to
+her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till I tell you.'
+
+'What is it, mother?' cried the husband and wife at once.
+
+Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer
+round the fire, informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes
+some years before--a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and
+everything of a finer sort than she had worn since her wedding day. But
+this evening an old superstition had strangely recurred to her. It used
+to be said, in her younger days, that if anything were amiss with a
+corpse, if only the ruff were not smooth, or the cap did not set right,
+the corpse in the coffin and beneath the clods would strive to put up
+its cold hands and arrange it. The bare thought made her nervous.
+
+'Don't talk so, grandmother!' said the girl, shuddering.
+
+'Now'--continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet smiling
+strangely at her own folly--'I want one of you, my children--when
+your mother is dressed and in the coffin---I want one of you to hold
+a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at
+myself, and see whether all's right?'
+
+'Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments,' murmured the stranger
+youth. 'I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking, and
+they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in the
+ocean--that wide and nameless sepulchre?'
+
+For a moment, the old woman's ghastly conception so engrossed the minds
+of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar
+of a blast, had grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the fated
+group were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the
+foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound
+were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild
+glance, and remained an instant, pale, affrighted, without utterance, or
+power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all their
+lips.
+
+'The Slide! The Slide!'
+
+The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable
+horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage, and
+sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot--where, in contemplation
+of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had
+quitted their security, and fled right into the pathway of destruction.
+Down came the whole side of the mountain, in a cataract of ruin.
+Just before it reached the house, the stream broke into two
+branches--shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole
+vicinity, blocked up the road, and annihilated everything in its
+dreadful course. Long ere the thunder of the great Slide had ceased to
+roar among the mountains, the mortal agony had been endured, and the
+victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found.
+
+The next morning, the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage
+chimney up the mountain side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on
+the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants
+had but gone forth to view the devastation of the Slide, and would
+shortly return, to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had
+left separate tokens, by which those who had known the family were made
+to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? (The story
+has been told far and wide, and Will forever be a legend of these
+mountains.) Poets have sung their fate.
+
+There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had
+been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the
+catastrophe of all its inmates. Others denied that there were sufficient
+grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth, with his
+dream of Earthly Immortality! His name and person utterly unknown; his
+history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his
+death and his existence equally a doubt! Whose was the agony of that
+death moment?
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT CARBUNCLE
+
+A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+
+(The Indian tradition, on which this somewhat extravagant tale is
+founded, is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought
+up in prose. Sullivan, in his History of Maine, written since the
+Revolution, remarks, that even then the existence of the Great Carbuncle
+was not entirely discredited.)
+
+AT nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the
+Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves, after
+a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come
+thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save
+one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for
+this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong
+enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude
+hut of branches, and kindling a great fire of shattered pines, that had
+drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank
+of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their number,
+perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies, by the
+absorbing spell of the pursuit, as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the
+sight of human faces, in the remote and solitary region whither they had
+ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the nearest
+settlement, while scant a mile above their heads was that black verge
+where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest trees, and
+either robe themselves in clouds or tower naked into the sky. The roar
+of the Amonoosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a
+solitary man had listened, while the mountain stream talked with the
+wind.
+
+The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings, and welcomed
+one another to the hut, where each man was the host, and all were the
+guests of the whole company. They spread their individual supplies of
+food on the flat surface of a rock, and partook of a general repast; at
+the close of which, a sentiment of good fellowship was perceptible among
+the party, though repressed by the idea, that the renewed search for the
+Great Carbuncle must make them strangers again in the morning. Seven men
+and one young woman, they warmed themselves together at the fire, which
+extended its bright wall along the whole front of their wigwam. As they
+observed the various and contrasted figures that made up the assemblage,
+each man looking like a caricature of himself, in the unsteady light
+that flickered over him, they came mutually to the conclusion, that
+an odder society had never met, in city or wilderness, on mountain or
+plain.
+
+The eldest of the group, a tall, lean, weather-beaten man, some sixty
+years of age, was clad in the skins of wild animals, whose fashion of
+dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf, and the
+bear, had long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those
+ill-fated mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom, in their early
+youth, the Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness, and became the
+passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew
+him as the Seeker and by no other name. As none could remember when he
+first took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of the Saco,
+that for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle, he had been
+condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time, still with
+the same feverish hopes at sunrise--the same despair at eve. Near this
+miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage, wearing a high-crowned
+hat, shaped somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond the sea, a
+Doctor Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried himself into a mummy by
+continually stooping over charcoal furnaces, and inhaling unwholesome
+fumes during his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It was told of
+him, whether truly or not, that, at the commencement of his studies, he
+had drained his body of all its richest blood, and wasted it, with other
+inestimable ingredients, in an unsuccessful experiment--and had never
+been a well man since. Another of the adventurers was Master bod
+Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selector Boston, and an elder of the
+famous Mr. Norton's church. His enemies had a ridiculous story that
+Master Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole hour after prayer time,
+every morning and evening, in wallowing naked among an immense quantity
+of pine-tree shillings, which were the earliest silver coinage of
+Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall notice had no name that his
+companions knew of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that always
+contorted his thin visage, and by a prodigious pair of spectacles, which
+were supposed to deform and discolor the whole face of nature, to this
+gentleman's perception. The fifth adventurer likewise lacked a name,
+which was the greater pity, as he appeared to be a poet. He was a
+bright-eyed man, but woefully pined away, which was no more than
+natural, if, as some people affirmed, his ordinary diet was fog, morning
+mist, and a slice of the densest cloud within his reach, sauced with
+moonshine, whenever he could get it. Certain it is, that the poetry
+which flowed from him had a smack of all these dainties. The sixth of
+the party was a young man of haughty mien, and sat somewhat apart from
+the rest, wearing his plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the
+fire glittered on the rich embroidery of his dress and gleamed intensely
+on the jewelled pommel of his sword. This was the Lord de Vere, who,
+when at home, was said to spend much of his time in the burial vault of
+his dead progenitors, rummaging their mouldy coffins in search of all
+the earthly pride and vainglory that was hidden among bones and dust;
+so that, besides his own share, he had the collected haughtiness of his
+whole line of ancestry.
+
+Lastly, there was a handsome youth in rustic garb, and by his side a
+blooming little person, in whom a delicate shade of maiden reserve was
+just melting into the rich glow of a young wife's affection. Her name
+was Hannah, and her husband's Matthew; two homely names, yet well enough
+adapted to the simple pair, who seemed strangely out of place among
+the whimsical fraternity whose wits had been set agog by the Great
+Carbuncle.
+
+Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire,
+sat this varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single
+object, that, of whatever else they began to speak, their closing words
+were sure to be illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related
+the circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a
+traveller's tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country,
+and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as
+could only, be quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, so long ago as
+when the famous Captain Smith visited these coasts, had seen it blazing
+far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the intervening years till
+now that he took up the search. A third, being camped on a hunting
+expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains, awoke at
+midnight, and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so
+that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They spoke of the
+innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the spot, and of
+the singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success from all
+adventurers, though it might seem so easy to follow to its source a
+light that overpowered the moon, and almost matched the sun. It was
+observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other
+in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a scarcely
+hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one. As if to
+allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian traditions
+that a spirit kept watch about the gem, and bewildered those who sought
+it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher hills, or by
+calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it hung. But these
+tales were deemed unworthy of credit, all professing to believe that
+the search had been baffled by want of sagacity or perseverance in
+the adventurers, or such other causes as might naturally obstruct the
+passage to any given point among the intricacies of forest, valley, and
+mountain.
+
+In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles
+looked round upon the party, making each individual, in turn, the object
+of the sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance.
+
+'So, fellow-pilgrims,' said he, 'here we are, seven wise men, and one
+fair damsel--who, doubtless, is as wise as any graybeard of the company:
+here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Methinks,
+now, it were not amiss that each of us declare what he proposes to do
+with the Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to clutch it.
+What says our friend in the bear skin? How mean you, good sir, to enjoy
+the prize which you have been seeking, the Lord knows how long, among
+the Crystal Hills?'
+
+'How enjoy it!' exclaimed the aged Seeker, bitterly. 'I hope for no
+enjoyment from it; that folly has passed long ago! I keep up the search
+for this accursed stone because the vain ambition of my youth has become
+a fate upon me in old age. The pursuit alone is my strength--the energy
+of my soul--the warmth of my blood--and the pith and marrow of my bones!
+Were I to turn my back upon it I should fall down dead on the hither
+side of the Notch, which is the gateway of this mountain region. Yet not
+to have my wasted lifetime back again would I give up my hopes of the
+Great Carbuncle! Having found it, I shall bear it to a certain cavern
+that I wot of, and there, grasping it in my arms, lie down and die, and
+keep it buried with me forever.'
+
+'O wretch, regardless of the interests of science!' cried Doctor
+Cacaphodel, with philosophic indignation. 'Thou art not worthy to
+behold, even from afar off, the lustre of this most precious gem that
+ever was concocted in the laboratory of Nature. Mine is the sole purpose
+for which a wise man may desire the possession of the Great Carbuncle.
+
+'Immediately on obtaining it--for I have a presentiment, good people,
+that the prize is reserved to crown my scientific reputation--I shall
+return to Europe, and employ my remaining years in reducing it to
+its first elements. A portion of the stone will I grind to impalpable
+powder; other parts shall be dissolved in acids, or whatever solvents
+will act upon so admirable a composition; and the remainder I design
+to melt in the crucible, or set on fire with the blow-pipe. By these
+various methods I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow
+the result of my labors upon the world in a folio volume.'
+
+'Excellent!' quoth the man with the spectacles. 'Nor need you hesitate,
+learned sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem; since
+the perusal of your folio may teach every mother's son of us to concoct
+a Great Carbuncle of his own.'
+
+'But, verily,' said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, 'for mine own part I object
+to the making of these counterfeits, as being calculated to reduce the
+marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, sirs, I have
+an interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my regular
+traffic, leaving my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and putting my
+credit to great hazard, and, furthermore, have put myself in peril of
+death or captivity by the accursed heathen savages--and all this without
+daring to ask the prayers of the congregation, because the quest for
+the Great Carbuncle is deemed little better than a traffic with the Evil
+One. Now think ye that I would have done this grievous wrong to my soul,
+body, reputation, and estate, without a reasonable chance of profit?'
+
+'Not I, pious Master Pigsnort,' said the man with the spectacles. 'I
+never laid such a great folly to thy charge.'
+
+'Truly, I hope not,' said the merchant. 'Now, as touching this Great
+Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it; but
+be it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will
+surely outvalue the Great Mogul's best diamond, which he holds at an
+incalculable sum. Wherefore, I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on
+shipboard, and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or
+into Heathendom, if Providence should send me thither, and, in a word,
+dispose of the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of the earth,
+that he may place it among his crown jewels. If any of ye have a wiser
+plan, let him expound it.'
+
+'That have I, thou sordid man!' exclaimed the poet. 'Dost thou desire
+nothing brighter than gold that thou wouldst transmute all this ethereal
+lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For myself, hiding
+the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my attic chamber, in
+one of the darksome alleys of London. There, night and day, will I
+gaze upon it; my soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be diffused
+throughout my intellectual powers, and gleam brightly in every line of
+poesy that I indite. Thus, long ages after I am gone, the splendor of
+the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name?'
+
+'Well said, Master Poet!' cried he of the spectacles. 'Hide it under thy
+cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes, and make thee
+look like a jack-o'-lantern!'
+
+'To think!' ejaculated the Lord de Vere, rather to himself than
+his companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his
+intercourse--'to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk
+of conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grub Street! Have not I
+resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament
+for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for
+ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor,
+the banners, and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping
+bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other adventurers sought
+the prize in vain but that I might win it, and make it a symbol of
+the glories of our lofty line? And never, on the diadem of the White
+Mountains, did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so honored as is
+reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres!'
+
+'It is a noble thought,' said the Cynic, with an obsequious sneer. 'Yet,
+might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp,
+and would display the glories of your lordship's progenitors more truly
+in the ancestral vault than in the castle hall.'
+
+'Nay, forsooth,' observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand
+in hand with his bride, 'the gentleman has bethought himself of a
+profitable use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking it
+for a like purpose.'
+
+'How, fellow!' exclaimed his lordship, in surprise. 'What castle hall
+hast thou to hang it in?'
+
+'No castle,' replied Matthew, 'but as neat a cottage as any within sight
+of the Crystal Hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I, being
+wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the Great Carbuncle,
+because we shall need its light in the long winter evenings; and it will
+be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they visit us. It will
+shine through the house so that we may pick up a pin in any corner, and
+will set all the windows aglowing as if there were a great fire of pine
+knots in the chimney. And then how pleasant, when we awake in the night,
+to be able to see one another's faces!'
+
+There was a general smile among the adventurers at the simplicity of the
+young couple's project in regard to this wondrous and invaluable stone,
+with which the greatest monarch on earth might have been proud to adorn
+his palace. Especially the man with spectacles, who had sneered at all
+the company in turn, now twisted his visage into such an expression of
+ill-natured mirth, that Matthew asked him, rather peevishly, what he
+himself meant to do with the Great Carbuncle.
+
+'The Great Carbuncle!' answered the Cynic, with ineffable scorn. 'Why,
+you blockhead, there is no such thing in rerum natura. I have come three
+thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every peak of these
+mountains, and poke my head into every chasm, for the sole purpose of
+demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit less an ass than
+thyself that the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug!'
+
+Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the
+adventurers to the Crystal Hills; but none so vain, so foolish, and so
+impious too, as that of the scoffer with the prodigious spectacles. He
+was one of those wretched and evil men whose yearnings are downward to
+the darkness, instead of heavenward, and who, could they but distinguish
+the lights which God hath kindled for us, would count the midnight gloom
+their chiefest glory. As the Cynic spoke, several of the party were
+startled by a gleam of red splendor, that showed the huge shapes of the
+surrounding mountains and the rock-bed of the turbulent river with an
+illumination unlike that of their fire on the trunks and black boughs
+of the forest trees. They listened for the roll of thunder, but heard
+nothing, and were glad that the tempest came not near them. The stars,
+those dial-points of heaven, now warned the adventurers to close their
+eyes on the blazing logs, and open them, in dreams, to the glow of the
+Great Carbuncle.
+
+The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest
+corner of the wigwam, and were separated from the rest of the party by
+a curtain of curiously-woven twigs, such as might have hung, in deep
+festoons, around the bridal-bower of Eve. The modest little wife had
+wrought this piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking. She
+and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped, and awoke from
+visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed light of one
+another's eyes. They awoke at the same instant, and with one happy
+smile beaming over their two faces, which grew brighter with their
+consciousness of the reality of life and love. But no sooner did she
+recollect where they were, than the bride peeped through the interstices
+of the leafy curtain, and saw that the outer room of the hut was
+deserted.
+
+'Up, dear Matthew!' cried she, in haste. 'The strange folk are all gone!
+Up, this very minute, or we shall loose the Great Carbuncle!'
+
+In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty prize
+which had lured them thither, that they had slept peacefully all night,
+and till the summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine; while
+the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish wakefulness, or
+dreamed of climbing precipices, and set off to realize their dreams
+with the earliest peep of dawn. But Matthew and Hannah, after their calm
+rest, were as light as two young deer, and merely stopped to say their
+prayers and wash themselves in a cold pool of the Amonoosuck, and
+then to taste a morsel of food, ere they turned their faces to the
+mountainside. It was a sweet emblem of conjugal affection, as they
+toiled up the difficult ascent, gathering strength from the mutual aid
+which they afforded. After several little accidents, such as a torn
+robe, a lost shoe, and the entanglement of Hannah's hair in a bough,
+they reached the upper verge of the forest, and were now to pursue a
+more adventurous course. The innumerable trunks and heavy foliage of the
+trees had hitherto shut in their thoughts, which now shrank affrighted
+from the region of wind and cloud and naked rocks and desolate sunshine,
+that rose immeasurably above them. They gazed back at the obscure
+wilderness which they had traversed, and longed to be buried again
+in its depths rather than trust themselves to so vast and visible a
+solitude.
+
+'Shall we go on?' said Matthew, throwing his arm round Hannah's waist,
+both to protect her and to comfort his heart by drawing her close to it.
+
+But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman's love of jewels,
+and could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the
+world, in spite of the perils with which it must be won.
+
+'Let us climb a little higher,' whispered she, yet tremulously, as she
+turned her face upward to the lonely sky.
+
+'Come, then,' said Matthew, mustering his manly courage and drawing her
+along with him, for she became timid again the moment that he grew bold.
+
+And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now
+treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines,
+which, by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely
+reached three feet in altitude. Next, they came to masses and fragments
+of naked rock heaped confusedly together, like a cairn reared by giants
+in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing
+breathed, nothing grew; there was no life but what was concentrated in
+their two hearts; they had climbed so high that Nature herself seemed no
+longer to keep them company. She lingered beneath them, within the verge
+of the forest trees, and sent a farewell glance after her children as
+they strayed where her own green footprints had never been. But soon
+they were to be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark the mists began to
+gather below, casting black spots of shadow on the vast landscape, and
+sailing heavily to one centre, as if the loftiest mountain peak had
+summoned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally, the vapors welded
+themselves, as it were, into a mass, presenting the appearance of a
+pavement over which the wanderers might have trodden, but where they
+would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed earth which they had
+lost. And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth again, more
+intensely, alas! than, beneath a clouded sky, they had ever desired a
+glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief to their desolation when
+the mists, creeping gradually up the mountain, concealed its lonely
+peak, and thus annihilated, at least for them, the whole region
+of visible space. But they drew closely together, with a fond and
+melancholy gaze, dreading lest the universal cloud should snatch them
+from each other's sight.
+
+Still, perhaps, they would have been resolute to climb as far and as
+high, between earth and heaven, as they could find foothold, if Hannah's
+strength had not begun to fail, and with that, her courage also. Her
+breath grew short. She refused to burden her husband with her weight,
+but often tottered against his side, and recovered herself each time by
+a feebler effort. At last, she sank down on one of the rocky steps of
+the acclivity.
+
+'We are lost, dear Matthew,' said she, mournfully. 'We shall never find
+our way to the earth again. And oh how happy we might have been in our
+cottage!'
+
+'Dear heart! we will yet be happy there,' answered Matthew. 'Look! In
+this direction, the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist. By its aid, I
+can direct our course to the passage of the Notch. Let us go back, love,
+and dream no more of the Great Carbuncle!'
+
+'The sun cannot be yonder,' said Hannah, with despondence. 'By this time
+it must be noon. If there could ever be any sunshine here, it would come
+from above our heads.'
+
+'But look!' repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone. 'It is
+brightening every moment. If not sunshine, what can it be?'
+
+Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was breaking
+through the mist, and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which
+continually grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles were interfused
+with the gloom. Now, also, the cloud began to roll away from the
+mountain, while, as it heavily withdrew, one object after another
+started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight, with precisely the
+effect of a new creation, before the indistinctness of the old chaos
+had been completely swallowed up. As the process went on, they saw the
+gleaming of water close at their feet, and found themselves on the very
+border of a mountain lake, deep, bright, clear, and calmly beautiful,
+spreading from brim to brim of a basin that had been scooped out of
+the solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its surface. The pilgrims
+looked whence it should proceed, but closed their eyes with a thrill of
+awful admiration, to exclude the fervid splendor that glowed from the
+brow of a cliff impending over the enchanted lake. For the simple pair
+had reached that lake of mystery, and found the long-sought shrine of
+the Great Carbuncle!
+
+They threw their arms around each other, and trembled at their own
+success; for, as the legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick
+upon their memory, they felt themselves marked out by fate and the
+consciousness was fearful. Often, from childhood upward, they had seen
+it shining like a distant star. And now that star was throwing its
+intensest lustre on their hearts. They seemed changed to one another's
+eyes, in the red brilliancy that flamed upon their cheeks, while it lent
+the same fire to the lake, the rocks, and sky, and to the mists which
+had rolled back before its power. But, with their next glance, they
+beheld an object that drew their attention even from the mighty stone.
+At the base of the cliff, directly beneath the Great Carbuncle, appeared
+the figure of a man, with his arms extended in the act of climbing, and
+his face turned upward, as if to drink the full gush of splendor. But he
+stirred not, no more than if changed to marble.
+
+'It is the Seeker,' whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her
+husband's arm. 'Matthew, he is dead.'
+
+'The joy of success has killed him,' replied Matthew, trembling
+violently. 'Or, perhaps, the very light of the Great Carbuncle was
+death!'
+
+'The Great Carbuncle,' cried a peevish voice behind them. 'The Great
+Humbug! If you have found it, prithee point it out to me.'
+
+They turned their heads, and there was the Cynic, with his prodigious
+spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at
+the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great
+Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if
+all the scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its
+radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet,
+as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be convinced
+that there was the least glimmer there.
+
+'Where is your Great Humbug?' he repeated. 'I challenge you to make me
+see it!'
+
+'There,' said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and
+turning the Cynic round towards the illuminated cliff. 'Take off those
+abominable spectacles, and you cannot help seeing it!'
+
+Now these colored spectacles probably darkened the Cynic's sight, in at
+least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people gaze
+at an eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched them from
+his nose, and fixed a bold stare full upon the ruddy blaze of the
+Great Carbuncle. But scarcely had he encountered it, when, with a deep,
+shuddering groan, he dropped his head, and pressed both hands across his
+miserable eyes. Thenceforth there was, in very truth, no light of the
+Great Carbuncle, nor any other light on earth, nor light of heaven
+itself, for the poor Cynic. So long accustomed to View all objects
+through a medium that deprived them of every glimpse of brightness,
+a single flash of so glorious a phenomenon, striking upon his naked
+vision, had blinded him forever.
+
+'Matthew,' said Hannah, clinging to him, 'let us go hence!'
+
+Matthew saw that she was faint, and kneeling down, supported her in his
+arms, while he threw some of the thrillingly cold water of the enchanted
+lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her, but could not renovate her
+courage.
+
+'Yes, dearest!' cried Matthew, pressing her tremulous form to his
+breast--'we will go hence, and return to our humble cottage. The blessed
+sunshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through our window. We will
+kindle the cheerful glow of our hearth, at eventide, and be happy in its
+light. But never again will we desire more light than all the world may
+share with us.'
+
+'No,' said his bride, 'for how could we live by day, or sleep by night,
+in this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle!'
+
+Out of the hollow of their hands, they drank each a draught from the
+lake, which presented them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly lip.
+Then, lending their guidance to the blinded Cynic, who uttered not a
+word, and even stifled his groans in his own most wretched heart, they
+began to descend the mountain. Yet, as they left the shore, till then
+untrodden, of the spirit's lake, they threw a farewell glance towards
+the cliff, and beheld the vapors gathering in dense volumes, through
+which the gem burned duskily.
+
+As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, the legend goes
+on to tell, that the worshipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up the
+quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to betake himself
+again to his warehouse, near the town dock, in Boston. But, as he passed
+through the Notch of the mountains, a war party of Indians captured
+our unlucky merchant, and carried him to Montreal, there holding him
+in bondage, till, by the payment of a heavy ransom, he had woefully
+subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shillings. By his long absence,
+moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that, for the rest of his
+life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a sixpence worth
+of copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned to his laboratory
+with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he ground to powder,
+dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible, and burned with the
+blow-pipe, and published the result of his experiments in one of the
+heaviest folios of the day. And, for all these purposes, the gem itself
+could not have answered better than the granite. The poet, by a somewhat
+similar mistake, made prize of a great piece of ice, which he found in
+a sunless chasm of the mountains, and swore that it corresponded, in all
+points, with his idea of the Great Carbuncle. The critics say, that, if
+his poetry lacked the splendor of the gem, it retained all the coldness
+of the ice. The Lord de Vere went back to his ancestral hall, where
+he contented himself with a wax-lighted chandelier, and filled, in due
+course of time, another coffin in the ancestral vault. As the funeral
+torches gleamed within that dark receptacle, there was no need of the
+Great Carbuncle to show the vanity of earthly pomp.
+
+The Cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the world,
+a miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire of light,
+for the wilful blindness of his former life. The whole night long, he
+would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he turned
+his face eastward, at sunrise, as duly as a Persian idolater; he made
+a pilgrimage to Rome, to witness the magnificent illumination of St.
+Peter's Church; and finally perished in the great fire of London, into
+the midst of which he had thrust himself, with the desperate idea of
+catching one feeble ray from the blaze that was kindling earth and
+heaven.
+
+Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years, and were fond of
+telling the legend of the Great Carbuncle. The tale, however, towards
+the close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full credence
+that had been accorded to it by those who remembered the ancient lustre
+of the gem. For it is affirmed that, from the hour when two mortals had
+shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel which would have
+dimmed all earthly things, its splendor waned. When other pilgrims
+reached the cliff, they found only an opaque stone, with particles of
+mica glittering on its surface. There is also a tradition that, as the
+youthful pair departed, the gem was loosened from the forehead of the
+cliff, and fell into the enchanted lake, and that, at noontide, the
+Seeker's form may still be seen to bend over its quenchless gleam.
+
+Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing as of old,
+and say that they have caught its radiance, like a flash of summer
+lightning, far down the valley of the Saco. And be it owned that, many
+a mile from the Crystal Hills, I saw a wondrous light around their
+summits, and was lured, by the faith of poesy, to be the latest pilgrim
+of the GREAT CARBUNCLE.
+
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES FROM MEMORY
+
+THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+
+IT was now the middle of September. We had come since sunrise from
+Bartlett, passing up through the valley of the Saco, which extends
+between mountainous walls, sometimes with a steep ascent, but often as
+level as a church aisle. All that day and two preceding ones we had been
+loitering towards the heart of the White Mountains--those old crystal
+hills, whose mysterious brilliancy had gleamed upon our distant
+wanderings before we thought of visiting them. Height after height had
+risen and towered one above another till the clouds began to hang below
+the peaks. Down their slopes were the red pathways of the slides, those
+avalanches of earth, stones and trees, which descend into the hollows,
+leaving vestiges of their track hardly to be effaced by the vegetation
+of ages. We had mountains behind us and mountains on each side, and a
+group of mightier ones ahead. Still our road went up along the Saco,
+right towards the centre of that group, as if to climb above the clouds
+in its passage to the farther region.
+
+In old times the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the
+northern Indians coming down upon them from this mountain rampart
+through some defile known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a wondrous
+path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans, was travelling
+up the valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside as he passed, till
+at length a great mountain took its stand directly across his intended
+road. He tarries not for such an obstacle, but, rending it asunder
+a thousand feet from peak to base, discloses its treasures of hidden
+minerals, its sunless waters, all the secrets of the mountain's inmost
+heart, with a mighty fracture of rugged precipices on each side. This
+is the Notch of the White Hills. Shame on me that I have attempted to
+describe it by so mean an image--feeling, as I do, that it is one of
+those symbolic scenes which lead the mind to the sentiment, though not
+to the conception, of Omnipotence.
+
+We had now reached a narrow passage, which showed almost the appearance
+of having been cut by human strength and artifice in the solid rock.
+There was a wall of granite on each side, high and precipitous,
+especially on our right, and so smooth that a few evergreens could
+hardly find foothold enough to grow there. This is the entrance, or, in
+the direction we were going, the extremity, of the romantic defile of
+the Notch. Before emerging from it, the rattling of wheels approached
+behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled out of the mountain, with seats on
+top and trunks behind, and a smart driver, in a drab greatcoat, touching
+the wheel horses with the whipstock and reining in the leaders. To my
+mind there was a sort of poetry in such an incident, hardly inferior
+to what would have accompanied the painted array of an Indian war party
+gliding forth from the same wild chasm. All the passengers, except a
+very fat lady on the back seat, had alighted. One was a mineralogist,
+a scientific, green-spectacled figure in black, bearing a heavy hammer,
+with which he did great damage to the precipices, and put the fragments
+in his pocket. Another was a well-dressed young man, who carried an
+opera glass set in gold, and seemed to be making a quotation from some
+of Byron's rhapsodies on mountain scenery. There was also a trader,
+returning from Portland to the upper part of Vermont; and a fair young
+girl, with a very faint bloom like one of those pale and delicate
+flowers which sometimes occur among alpine cliffs.
+
+They disappeared, and we followed them, passing through a deep pine
+forest, which for some miles allowed us to see nothing but its own
+dismal shade. Towards nightfall we reached a level amphitheatre,
+surrounded by a great rampart of hills, which shut out the sunshine
+long before it left the external world. It was here that we obtained our
+first view, except at a distance, of the principal group of mountains.
+They are majestic, and even awful, when contemplated in a proper mood,
+yet, by their breadth of base and the long ridges which support them,
+give the idea of immense bulk rather than of towering height. Mount
+Washington, indeed, looked near to heaven: he was white with snow a mile
+downward, and had caught the only cloud that was sailing through the
+atmosphere to veil his head. Let us forget the other names of American
+statesmen that have been stamped upon these hills, but still call the
+loftiest Washington. Mountains are Earth's undecaying monuments. They
+must stand while she endures, and never should be consecrated to the
+mere great men of their own age and country, but to the mighty
+ones alone, whose glory is universal, and whom all time will render
+illustrious.
+
+The air, not often sultry in this elevated region, nearly two thousand
+feet above the sea, was now sharp and cold, like that of a clear
+November evening in the lowlands. By morning, probably, there would be a
+frost, if not a snowfall, on the grass and rye, and an icy surface over
+the standing water. I was glad to perceive a prospect of comfortable
+quarters in a house which we were approaching, and of pleasant company
+in the guests who were assembled at the door.
+
+OUR EVENING PARTY AMONG THE MOUNTAINS We stood in front of a good
+substantial farmhouse, of old date in that wild country. A sign over the
+door denoted it to be the White Mountain Post Office--an establishment
+which distributes letters and newspapers to perhaps a score of persons,
+comprising the population of two or three townships among the hills. The
+broad and weighty antlers of a deer, 'a stag of ten,' were fastened at
+the corner of the house; a fox's bushy tail was nailed beneath them; and
+a huge black paw lay on the ground, newly severed and still bleeding
+the trophy of a bear hunt. Among several persons collected about the
+doorsteps, the most remarkable was a sturdy mountaineer, of six feet two
+and corresponding bulk, with a heavy set of features, such as might be
+moulded on his own blacksmith's anvil, but yet indicative of mother wit
+and rough humor. As we appeared, he uplifted a tin trumpet, four or five
+feet long, and blew a tremendous blast, either in honor of our arrival
+or to awaken an echo from the opposite hill.
+
+Ethan Crawford's guests were of such a motley description as to form
+quite a picturesque group, seldom seen together except at some place
+like this, at once the pleasure house of fashionable tourists and the
+homely inn of country travellers. Among the company at the door were
+the mineralogist and the owner of the gold opera glass whom we had
+encountered in the Notch; two Georgian gentlemen, who had chilled their
+southern blood that morning on the top of Mount Washington; a physician
+and his wife from Conway; a trader of Burlington, and an old squire of
+the Green Mountains; and two young married couples, all the way from
+Massachusetts, on the matrimonial jaunt, Besides these strangers, the
+rugged county of Coos, in which we were, was represented by half a dozen
+wood-cutters, who had slain a bear in the forest and smitten off his
+paw.
+
+I had joined the party, and had a moment's leisure to examine them
+before the echo of Ethan's blast returned from the hill. Not one, but
+many echoes had caught up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted its
+complicated threads, and found a thousand aerial harmonies in one stern
+trumpet tone. It was a distinct yet distant and dreamlike symphony
+of melodious instruments, as if an airy band had been hidden on the
+hillside and made faint music at the summons. No subsequent trial
+produced so clear, delicate, and spiritual a concert as the first. A
+field-piece was then discharged from the top of a neighboring hill,
+and gave birth to one long reverberation, which ran round the circle
+of mountains in an unbroken chain of sound and rolled away without a
+separate echo. After these experiments, the cold atmosphere drove us all
+into the house, with the keenest appetites for supper.
+
+It did one's heart good to see the great fires that were kindled in
+the parlor and bar-room, especially the latter, where the fireplace was
+built of rough stone, and might have contained the trunk of an old tree
+for a backlog. A man keeps a comfortable hearth when his own forest is
+at his very door. In the parlor, when the evening was fairly set in, we
+held our hands before our eyes to shield them from the ruddy glow,
+and began a pleasant variety of conversation. The mineralogist and the
+physician talked about the invigorating qualities of the mountain air,
+and its excellent effect on Ethan Crawford's father, an old man of
+seventy-five, with the unbroken frame of middle life. The two brides and
+the doctor's wife held a whispered discussion, which, by their frequent
+titterings and a blush or two, seemed to have reference to the trials or
+enjoyments of the matrimonial state. The bridegrooms sat together in a
+corner, rigidly silent, like Quakers whom the spirit moveth not, being
+still in the odd predicament of bashfulness towards their own young
+wives. The Green Mountain squire chose me for his companion, and
+described the difficulties he had met with half a century ago in
+travelling from the Connecticut River through the Notch to Conway, now
+a single day's journey, though it had cost him eighteen. The Georgians
+held the album between them, and favored us with the few specimens
+of its contents which they considered ridiculous enough to be worth
+hearing. One extract met with deserved applause. It was a 'Sonnet to the
+Snow on Mount Washington,' and had been contributed that very afternoon,
+bearing a signature of great distinction in magazines and annals. The
+lines were elegant and full of fancy, but too remote from familiar
+sentiment, and cold as their subject, resembling those curious specimens
+of crystallized vapor which I observed next day on the mountain top. The
+poet was understood to be the young gentleman of the gold opera glass,
+who heard our laudatory remarks with the composure of a veteran.
+
+Such was our party, and such their ways of amusement. But on a winter
+evening another set of guests assembled at the hearth where these summer
+travellers were now sitting. I once had it in contemplation to spend a
+month hereabouts, in sleighing time, for the sake of studying the yeomen
+of New England, who then elbow each other through the Notch by hundreds,
+on their way to Portland. There could be no better school for such a
+place than Ethan Crawford's inn. Let the student go thither in December,
+sit down with the teamsters at their meals, share their evening
+merriment, and repose with them at night when every bed has its three
+occupants, and parlor, barroom, and kitchen are strewn with slumberers
+around the fire. Then let him rise before daylight, button his
+greatcoat, muffle up his ears, and stride with the departing caravan
+a mile or two, to see how sturdily they make head against the blast. A
+treasure of characteristic traits will repay all inconveniences, even
+should a frozen nose be of the number.
+
+The conversation of our party soon became more animated and sincere,
+and we recounted some traditions of the Indians, who believed that the
+father and mother of their race were saved from a deluge by ascending
+the peak of Mount Washington. The children of that pair have been
+overwhelmed, and found no such refuge. In the mythology of the savage,
+these mountains were afterwards considered sacred and inaccessible,
+full of unearthly wonders, illuminated at lofty heights by the blaze
+of precious stones, and inhabited by deities, who sometimes shrouded
+themselves in the snowstorm and came down on the lower world. There
+are few legends more poetical than that of the' Great Carbuncle' of the
+White Mountains. The belief was communicated to the English settlers,
+and is hardly yet extinct, that a gem, of such immense size as to be
+seen shining miles away, hangs from a rock over a clear, deep lake,
+high up among the hills. They who had once beheld its splendor were
+inthralled with an unutterable yearning to possess it. But a spirit
+guarded that inestimable jewel, and bewildered the adventurer with a
+dark mist from the enchanted lake. Thus life was worn away in the vain
+search for an unearthly treasure, till at length the deluded one went up
+the mountain, still sanguine as in youth, but returned no more. On this
+theme methinks I could frame a tale with a deep moral.
+
+The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to these superstitions
+of the red men, though we spoke of them in the centre of the haunted
+region. The habits and sentiments of that departed people were too
+distinct from those of their successors to find much real sympathy. It
+has often been a matter of regret to me that I was shut out from the
+most peculiar field of American fiction by an inability to see any
+romance, or poetry, or grandeur, or beauty in the Indian character, at
+least till such traits were pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian
+story. Yet no writer can be more secure of a permanent place in our
+literature than the biographer of the Indian chiefs. His subject, as
+referring to tribes which have mostly vanished from the earth, gives
+him a right to be placed on a classic shelf, apart from the merits which
+will sustain him there.
+
+I made inquiries whether, in his researches about these parts, our
+mineralogist had found the three 'Silver Hills' which an Indian sachem
+sold to an Englishman nearly two hundred years ago, and the treasure of
+which the posterity of the purchaser have been looking for ever since.
+But the man of science had ransacked every hill along the Saco, and knew
+nothing of these prodigious piles of wealth. By this time, as usual with
+men on the eve of great adventure, we had prolonged our session deep
+into the night, considering how early we were to set out on our six
+miles' ride to the foot of Mount Washington. There was now a general
+breaking up. I scrutinized the faces of the two bridegrooms, and saw but
+little probability of their leaving the bosom of earthly bliss, in the
+first week of the honeymoon and at the frosty hour of three, to climb
+above the clouds; nor when I felt how sharp the wind was as it rushed
+through a broken pane and eddied between the chinks of my unplastered
+chamber, did I anticipate much alacrity on my own part, though we were
+to seek for the 'Great Carbuncle.'
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Great Stone Face, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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diff --git a/1916.zip b/1916.zip
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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Great Stone Face, etc., by Hawthorne
+#4 through #7 in our series of stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+
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+The Great Stone Face, et. al.
+
+by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+October, 1999  [Etext #1916]
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  INTRODUCTION
+  THE GREAT STONE FACE
+  The AMBITIOUS GUEST
+  THE GREAT CARBUNCLE
+  SKETCHES FROM MEMORY
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext The Great Stone Face, etc., by Hawthorne
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+
+
+THE GREAT STONE FACE 
+AND OTHER TALES OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+
+BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 1882
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  INTRODUCTION
+  THE GREAT STONE FACE
+  The AMBITIOUS GUEST
+  THE GREAT CARBUNCLE
+  SKETCHES FROM MEMORY
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+THE first three numbers in this collection are tales of the White Hills 
+in New Hampshire. The passages from Sketches from Memory show 
+that Hawthorne had visited the mountains in one of his occasional 
+rambles from home, but there are no entries in his Note Books which 
+give accounts of such a visit. There is, however, among these notes 
+the following interesting paragraph, written in 1840 and clearly 
+foreshadowing The Great Stone Face:
+
+'The semblance of a human face to be formed on the side of a 
+mountain, or in the fracture of a small stone, by a lusus naturae [freak 
+of nature]. The face is an object of curiosity for years or centuries, 
+and by and by a boy is born whose features gradually assume the 
+aspect of that portrait. At some critical juncture the resemblance is 
+found to be perfect. A prophecy may be connected.'
+
+It is not impossible that this conceit occurred to Hawthorne before he 
+had himself seen the Old Man of the Mountain, or the Profile, in the 
+Franconia Notch which is generally associated in the minds of readers 
+with The Great Stone Face.
+
+In The Ambitious Guest he has made use of the incident still told to 
+travellers through the Notch, of the destruction of the Willey family 
+in August, 1826. The house occupied by the family was on the slope 
+of a mountain, and after a long drought there was a terrible tempest 
+which not only raised the river to a great height but loosened the 
+surface of the mountain so that a great landslide took place. The 
+house was in the track of the slide, and the family rushed out of doors. 
+Had they remained within they would have been safe, for a ledge 
+above the house parted the avalanche so that it was diverted into two 
+paths and swept past the house on either side. Mr. and Mrs. Willey, 
+their five children, and two hired men were crushed under the weight 
+of earth, rocks, and trees.
+
+In the Sketches from Memory Hawthorne gives an intimation of the 
+tale which he might write and did afterward write of The Great 
+Carbuncle. The paper is interesting as showing what were the actual 
+experiences out of which he formed his imaginative stories.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT STONE FACE and Other Tales OF THE WHITE 
+MOUNTAINS
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT STONE FACE
+
+One afternoon, when the sun was going down, a mother and her little 
+boy sat at the door of their cottage, talking about the Great Stone 
+Face. They had but to lift their eyes, and there it was plainly to be 
+seen, though miles away, with the sunshine brightening all its 
+features. And what was the Great Stone Face? Embosomed amongst a 
+family of lofty mountains, there was a valley so spacious that it con-
+tained many thousand inhabitants. Some of these good people dwelt 
+in log-huts, with the black forest all around them, on the steep and 
+difficult hillsides. Others had their homes in comfortable farm-
+houses, and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or level 
+surfaces of the valley. Others, again, were congregated into populous 
+villages, where some wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down from its 
+birthplace in the upper mountain region, had been caught and tamed 
+by human cunning, and compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-
+factories. The inhabitants of this valley, in short, were numerous, and 
+of many modes of life. But all of them, grown people and children, 
+had a kind of familiarity with the Great Stone Face, although some 
+possessed the gift of distinguishing this grand natural phenomenon 
+more perfectly than many of their neighbors.
+
+The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature in her mood of 
+majestie playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a mountain 
+by some immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a 
+position as, when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble 
+the features of the human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous 
+giant, or a Titan, had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. 
+There was the broad arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; 
+the nose, with its long bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could 
+have spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents from one end of 
+the valley to the other. True it is, that if the spectator approached too 
+near, he lost the outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern only 
+a heap of ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one 
+upon another. Retracing his steps, however, the wondrous features 
+would again be seen; and the farther he withdrew from them, the 
+more like a human face, with all its original divinity intact, did they 
+appear; until, as it grew dim in the distance, with the clouds and 
+glorified vapor of the mountains clustering about it, the Great Stone 
+Face seemed positively to be alive.
+
+It was a happy lot for children to grow up to manhood or womanhood 
+with the Great Stone Face before their eyes, for all the features were 
+noble, and the expression was at once grand and sweet, as if it were 
+the glow of a vast, warm heart, that embraced all mankind in its 
+affections, and had room for more. It was an education only to look 
+at it. According to the belief of many people, the valley owed much of 
+its fertility to this benign aspect that was continually beaming over 
+it, illuminating the clouds, and infusing its tenderness into the 
+sunshine.
+
+As we began with saying, a mother and her little boy sat at their 
+cottage-door, gazing at the Great Stone Face, and talking about it. The 
+child's name was Ernest.
+
+'Mother,' said he, while the Titanic visage miled on him, 'I wish that it 
+could speak, for it looks so very kindly that its voice must needs be 
+pleasant. If I were to See a man with such a face, I should love him 
+dearly.'   'If an old prophecy should come to pass,' answered his 
+mother, 'we may see a man, some time for other, with exactly such a 
+face as that.'  'What prophecy do you mean, dear mother?' eagerly 
+inquired Ernest. 'Pray tell me all about it!'
+  
+So his mother told him a story that her own mother had told to her, 
+when she herself was younger than little Ernest; a story, not of things 
+that were past, but of what was yet to come; a story, nevertheless, so 
+very old, that even the Indians, who formerly inhabited this valley, 
+had heard it from their forefathers, to whom, as they affirmed, it had 
+been murmured by the mountain streams, and whispered by the wind among 
+the tree-tops. The purport was, that, at some future day, a child 
+should be born hereabouts, who was destined to become the greatest and 
+noblest personage of his time, and whose countenance, in manhood, 
+should bear an exact resemblance to the Great Stone Face. Not a few 
+old-fashioned people, and young ones likewise, in the ardor of their 
+hopes, still cherished an enduring faith in this old prophecy. But 
+others, who had seen more of the world, had watched and waited till 
+they were weary, and had beheld no man with  such a face, nor any man 
+that proved to be much greater or nobler than his neighbors, concluded 
+it to be nothing but an idle tale. At all events, the great man of the 
+prophecy had not yet appeared."
+
+O mother, dear mother!' cried Ernest, clapping his hands above his 
+head, 'I do hope that I shall live to see him!
+
+His mother was an affectionate and thoughtful woman, and felt that it 
+was wisest not to discourage the generous hopes of her little boy. So 
+she only said to him, 'Perhaps you may.'
+
+And Ernest never forgot the story that his mother told him. It was 
+always in his mind, whenever he looked upon the Great Stone Face. 
+He spent his childhood in the log-cottage where he was born, and was 
+dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in many things, assisting her 
+much with his little hands, and more with his loving heart. In this 
+manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, he grew up to be a 
+mild, quiet, unobtrusive boy, and sun-browned with labor in the 
+fields, but with more intelligence brightening his aspect than is seen 
+in many lads who have been taught at famous schools. Yet Ernest had 
+had no teacher, save only that the Great Stone Face became one to 
+him. When the toil of the day was over, he would gaze at it for hours, 
+until he began to imagine that those vast features recognized him, and 
+gave him a smile of kindness and encouragement, responsive to his 
+own look of veneration. We must not take upon us to affirm that this 
+was a mistake, although the Face may have looked no more kindly at 
+Ernest than at all the world besides. But the secret was that the boy's 
+tender and confiding simplicity discerned what other people could not 
+see; and thus the love, which was meant for all, became his peculiar 
+portion.
+
+About this time there went a rumor throughout the valley, that the 
+great man, foretold from ages long ago, who was to bear a 
+resemblance to the Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems 
+that, many years before, a young man had migrated from the valley 
+and settled at a distant seaport, where, after getting together a little 
+money, he had set up as a shopkeeper. His name but I could never 
+learn whether it was his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of 
+his habits and success in life--was Gathergold.
+
+Being shrewd and active, and endowed by Providence with that 
+inscrutable faculty which develops itself in what the world calls luck, 
+he became an exceedingly rich merchant, and owner of a whole fleet 
+of bulky-bottomed ships. All the countries of the globe appeared to 
+join hands for the mere purpose of adding heap after heap to the 
+mountainous accumulation of this one man's wealth. The cold regions 
+of the north, almost within the gloom and shadow of the Arctic 
+Circle, sent him their tribute in the shape of furs; hot Africa sifted for 
+him the golden sands of her rivers, and gathered up the ivory tusks of 
+her great elephants out of the forests; the east came bringing him the 
+rich shawls, and spices, and teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and 
+the gleaming purity of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand 
+with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold 
+might sell their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the original 
+commodity what it might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be 
+said of him, as of Midas, in the fable, that whatever he touched with 
+his finger immediately glistened, and grew yellow, and was changed 
+at once into sterling metal, or, which suited him still better, into piles 
+of coin. And, when Mr. Gathergold had become so very rich that it 
+would have taken him a hundred years only to count his wealth, he 
+bethought himself of his native valley, and resolved to go back 
+thither, and end his days where he was born. With this
+purpose in view, he sent a skilful architect to build him such a palace 
+as should be fit for a man of his vast wealth to live in.
+
+As I have said above, it had already been rumored in the' valley that 
+Mr. Gathergold had turned out to be the prophetic personage so long 
+and vainly looked for, and that his visage was the perfect and 
+undeniable similitude of the Great Stone Face. People were the more 
+ready to believe that this must needs be the fact, when they beheld the 
+splendid edifice that rose, as if by enchantment, on the site of his 
+father's old weather-beaten farmhouse. The exterior was of marble, so 
+dazzlingly white that it seemed as though the whole structure might 
+melt away in the sunshine, like those humbler ones which Mr. 
+Gathergold, in his young play-days, before his fingers were gifted 
+with the touch of transmutation, had been accustomed to build of 
+snow. It had a richly ornamented portico supported by tall pillars, 
+beneath which was a lofty door, studded with silver knobs, and made 
+of a kind of variegated wood that had been brought from beyond the 
+sea. The windows, from the floor to the ceiling of each stately 
+apartment, were composed, respectively' of but one enormous pane of 
+glass, so transparently pure that it was said to be a finer medium than 
+even the vacant atmosphere. Hardly anybody had been permitted to 
+see the interior of this palace; but it was reported, and with good 
+semblance of truth, to be far more gorgeous than the outside, 
+insomuch that whatever was iron or brass in other houses was silver 
+or gold in this; and Mr. Gathergold's bedchamber, especially, made 
+such a glittering appearance that no ordinary man would have been 
+able to close his eyes there. But, on the other hand, Mr. Gathergold 
+was now so inured to wealth, that perhaps he could not have closed 
+his eyes unless where the gleam of it was certain to find its way 
+beneath his eyelids.
+
+In due time, the mansion was finished; next came the upholsterers, 
+with magnificent furniture; then, a whole troop of black and white 
+servants, the haringers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majestic 
+person, was expected to arrive at sunset. Our friend Ernest, 
+meanwhile, had been deeply stirred by the idea that the great man, the 
+noble man, the man of prophecy, after so many ages of delay, was at 
+length to be made manifest to his native valley. He knew, boy as he 
+was, that there were a thousand ways in which Mr. Gathergold, with 
+his vast wealth, might transform himself into an angel of beneficence, 
+and assume a control over human affairs as wide and benignant as the 
+smile of the Great Stone Face. Full of faith and hope, Ernest doubted 
+not that what the people said was true, and that now he was to behold 
+the living likeness of those wondrous features on the mountainside. 
+While the boy was still gazing up the valley, and fancying, as he 
+always did, that the Great Stone Face returned his gaze and looked 
+kindly at him, the rumbling of wheels was heard, approaching swiftly 
+along the winding road.
+
+'Here he comes!' cried a group of people who were assembled to 
+witness the arrival. 'Here comes the great Mr. Gathergold!'
+
+A carriage, drawn by four horses, dashed round the turn of the road. 
+Within it, thrust partly out of the window, appeared the physiognomy 
+of the old man, with a skin as yellow as if his own Midas-hand had 
+transmuted it. He had a low forehead, small, sharp eyes, puckered 
+about with innumerable wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he made 
+still thinner by pressing them forcibly together.
+
+The very image or the Great Stone Face!' shouted the people. 'Sure 
+enough, the old prophecy is true; and here we have the great man 
+come, at last!'
+
+And, what greatly perplexed Ernest, they seemed actually to believe 
+that here was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there 
+chanced to be an old beggar woman and two little beggar-children, 
+stragglers from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled 
+onward, held out their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most 
+piteously beseeching charity. A yellow claw the very same that had 
+dawed together so much wealth- poked itself out of the coach-
+window, and dropt some copper coins upon the ground; so that, 
+though the great man's name seems to have been Gathergold, he 
+might just as suitably have been nicknamed Scattercopper. Still, 
+nevertheless, with an earnest shout, and evidently with as much good 
+faith as ever, the people bellowed 'He is the very image of the Great 
+Stone Face!' But Ernest turned sadly from the wrinkled shrewdness of 
+that sordid visage, and gazed up the valley, where, amid a gathering 
+mist, gilded by the last sunbeams, he could still distinguish those 
+glorious features which had impressed themselves into his soul. Their 
+aspect cheered him. What did the benign lips seem to say?
+
+'He will come! Fear not, Ernest; the man will come! '
+
+The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a boy. He had grown to be 
+a young man now. He attracted little notice from the other inhabitants 
+of the valley; for they saw nothing remarkable in his way of life, save 
+that, when the labor of the day was over, he still loved to go apart and 
+gaze and meditate upon the Great Stone Face. According to their idea 
+of the matter, it was a folly, indeed, but pardonable, inasmuch as 
+Ernest was industrious, kind, and neighborly, and neglected no duty 
+for the sake of indulging this idle habit. They knew not that the Great 
+Stone Face had become a teacher to him, and that the sentiment 
+which was expressed in it would enlarge the young man's heart, and 
+fill it with wider and deeper sympathies than other hearts. They knew 
+not that thence would come a better wisdom than could be learned 
+from books, and a better life than could be moulded on the defaced 
+example of other human lives. Neither did Ernest know that the 
+thoughts and affections which came to him so naturally, in the fields 
+and at the fireside, and wherever he communed with himself, were of 
+a higher tone than those which all men shared with him. A simple 
+soul -- simple as when his mother first taught him the old prophecy--
+he beheld the marvellous features beaming adown the valley, and still 
+wondered that their human counterpart was so long in making his 
+appearance.
+
+By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and buried; and the 
+oddest part of the matter was, that his wealth, which was the body and 
+spirit of his existence, had disappeared before his death, leaving 
+nothing of him but a living skeleton, covered over with a wrinkled, 
+yellow skin. Since the melting away of his gold, it had been very 
+generally conceded that there was no such striking resemblance, after 
+all, betwixt the ignoble features of the ruined merchant and that 
+majestic face upon the mountainside. So the people ceased to honor 
+him during his lifetime, and quietly consigned him to forgetfulness 
+after his decease. Once in a while, it is true, his memory was brought 
+up in connection with the magnificent palace which he had
+built, and which had long ago been turned into a hotel for the 
+accommodation of strangers, multitudes of whom came, every 
+summer, to visit that famous natural curiosity, the Great Stone Face. 
+Thus, Mr. Gathergold being discredited and thrown into the shade, 
+the man of prophecy was yet to come.
+
+It so happened that a native-born son of the valley, many years 
+before, had enlisted as a soldier, and, after a great deal of hard 
+fighting, had now become an illustrious commander. Whatever he 
+may be called in history, he was known in camps and on the 
+battlefield under the nickname of Old Blood-and-Thunder. This war-
+worn veteran, being now infirm with age and wounds, and weary of 
+the turmoil of a military life, and of the roll of the drum and the 
+clangor of the trumpet, that had so long been ringing in his ears, had 
+lately signified a purpose of returning to his native valley, hoping to 
+find repose where he remembered to have left it. The inhabitants, his 
+old neighbors and their grown-up children, were resolved to welcome 
+the renowned warrior with a salute of cannon and a public dinner; and 
+all the more enthusiastically, it being affirmed that now, at last, the 
+likeness of the Great Stone Face had actually appeared. An aid-de-
+camp of Old Blood-and-Thunder, travelling through the valley, was 
+said to have been struck with the resemblance. Moreover the 
+schoolmates and early acquaintances of the general were ready
+to testify, on oath, that, to the best of their recollection, the aforesaid 
+general had been exceedingly like the majestic image, even when a 
+boy, only that the idea had never occurred to them at that period. 
+Great, therefore, was the excitement throughout the valley; and many 
+people, who had never once thought of glancing at the Great Stone 
+Face for years before, now spent their time in gazing at it, for the sake 
+of knowing exactly how General Blood-and-Thunder looked.
+
+On the day of the great festival, Ernest, with all the other people of 
+the valley, left their work, and proceeded to the spot where the sylvan 
+banquet was prepared. As he approached, the loud voice of the Rev. 
+Dr. Battleblast was heard, beseeching a blessing on the good things 
+set before them, and on the distinguished friend of peace in whose 
+honor they were assembled. The tables were arranged in a cleared 
+space of the woods, shut in by the surrounding trees, except where a 
+vista opened eastward, and afforded a distant view of the Great Stone 
+Face. Over the general's chair, which was a relic from the home of 
+Washington, there was an arch of verdant boughs, with the laurel 
+profusely intermixed, and surmounted by his country's banner, 
+beneath which he had won his victories. Our friend Ernest raised 
+himself on his tiptoes, in hopes to get a glimpse of the celebrated 
+guest; but there was a mighty crowd about the tables anxious to hear 
+the toasts and speeches, and to catch any word that might fall from 
+the general in reply; and a volunteer company, doing duty as a guard, 
+pricked ruthlessly with their bayonets at any particularly quiet person 
+among the throng. So Ernest, being of an unobtrusive character, was 
+thrust quite into the background, where he could see no more of Old 
+Blood-and-Thunder's physiognomy than if it had been still blazing on 
+the battlefield. To console himself, he turned towards the Great Stone 
+Face, which, like a faithful and long-remembered friend, looked back 
+and smiled upon him through the vista of the forest. Meantime, 
+however, he could overhear the remarks of various individuals, who 
+were comparing the features of the hero with the face on the distant 
+mountainside.
+
+"T is the same face, to a hair!' cried one man, cutting a caper for joy.
+
+'Wonderfully like, that's a fact!' responded another.
+
+'Like! why, I call it Old Blood-and-Thunder himself, in a monstrous 
+looking-glass!' cried a third.
+
+'And why not? He's the greatest man of this or any other age, beyond 
+a doubt.'
+
+And then all three of the speakers gave a great shout, which 
+communicated electricity to the crowd, and called forth a roar from a 
+thousand voices, that went reverberating for miles among the 
+mountains, until you might have supposed that the Great Stone Face 
+had poured its thunder-breath into the cry. All these comments, and 
+this vast enthusiasm, served the more to interest our friend; nor did he 
+think of questioning that now, at length, the mountain-visage had 
+found its human counterpart. It is true, Ernest had imagined that this 
+long-looked-for personage would appear in the character of a man of 
+peace, uttering wisdom, and doing good, and making people happy. 
+But, taking an habitual breadth of view, with all his simplicity, he 
+contended that providence should choose its own method of blessing 
+mankind, and could conceive that this great end might be effected 
+even by a warrior and a bloody sword, should inscrutable wisdom see 
+fit to order matters SO.
+
+'The general! the general!' was now the cry. ' Hush! silence! Old 
+Blood-and-Thunder's going to make a speech.'
+
+Even so; for, the cloth being removed, the general's health had been 
+drunk, amid shouts of applause, and he now stood upon his feet to 
+thank the company. Ernest saw him. There he was, over the shoulders 
+of the crowd, from the two glittering epaulets and embroidered collar 
+upward, beneath the arch of green boughs with intertwined laurel, and 
+the banner drooping as if to shade his brow! And there, too, visible in 
+the same glance, through the vista of the forest, appeared the Great 
+Stone Face! And was there, indeed, such a resemblance as the crowd 
+had testified? Alas, Ernest could not recognize it! He beheld a war-
+worn and weather-beaten countenance, full of energy, and expressive 
+of an iron will; but the gentle wisdom, the deep, broad, tender 
+sympathies, were altogether wanting in Old Blood-and-Thunder's 
+visage; and even if the Great Stone Face had assumed his look of 
+stern command, the milder traits would still have tempered it.
+
+' This is not the man of prophecy,' sighed Ernest to himself, as he 
+made his way out of the throng. 'And must the world wait longer yet?'
+
+The mists had congregated about the distant mountainside, and there 
+were seen the grand and awful features of the Great Stone Face, awful 
+but benignant, as if a mighty angel were sitting among the hills, and 
+enrobing himself in a cloud-vesture of gold and purple. As he looked, 
+Ernest could hardly believe but that a smile beamed over the whole 
+visage, with a radiance still brightening, although without motion of 
+the lips. It was probably the effect of the western sunshine, melting 
+through the thinly diffused vapors that had swept between him and 
+the object that he gazed at. But- as it always did- the aspect of his 
+marvellous friend made Ernest as hopeful as if he had never hoped in 
+vain.
+
+'Fear not, Ernest,' said his heart, even as if the Great Face were 
+whispering him- 'fear not, Ernest; he will come.'
+
+More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. Ernest still dwelt in his 
+native valley, and was now a man of middle age. By imperceptible 
+degrees, he had become known among the people. Now, as 
+heretofore, he labored for his bread, and was the same simple-hearted 
+man that he had always been. But he had thought and felt so much, he 
+had given so many of the best hours of his life to unworldly hopes for 
+some great good to mankind, that it seemed as though he had been 
+talking with the angels, and had imbibed a portion of their wisdom 
+unawares. It was visible in the calm and well-considered beneficence 
+of his daily life, the quiet stream of which had made a wide green 
+margin all along its course. Not a day passed by, that the world was 
+not the better because this man, humble as he was, had lived. He 
+never stepped aside from his own path, yet would always reach a 
+blessing to his neighbor. Almost involuntarily, too, he had become a 
+preacher. The pure and high simplicity of his thought, which, as one 
+of its manifestations, took shape in the good deeds that dropped 
+silently from his hand, flowed also forth in speech. He uttered truths 
+that wrought upon and moulded the lives of those who heard him. His 
+auditors, it may be, never suspected that Ernest, their own neighbor 
+and familiar friend, was more than an ordinary man; least of all did 
+Ernest himself suspect it; but, inevitably as the murmur of a rivulet, 
+came thoughts out of his mouth that no other human lips had spoken.
+
+When the people's minds had had a little time to cool, they were ready 
+enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity 
+between General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and 
+the benign visage on the mountain-side. But now, again, there were 
+reports and many paragraphs in the newspapers, affirming that the 
+likeness of the Great Stone Face had appeared upon the broad 
+shoulders of a certain eminent statesman. He, like Mr. Gathergold and 
+old Blood-and-Thunder, was a native of the valley, but had left it in 
+his early days, and taken up the trades of law and politics. Instead of 
+the rich man's wealth and the warrior's sword, he had but a tongue, 
+and it was mightier than both together. So wonderfully eloquent was 
+he, that whatever he might choose to say, his auditors had no choice 
+but to believe him; wrong looked like right, and right like wrong; for 
+when it pleased him, he could make a kind of illuminated fog with his 
+mere breath, and obscure the natural daylight with it. His tongue, 
+indeed, was a magic instrument: sometimes it rumbled like the 
+thunder; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest music. It was the 
+blast of war -- the song of peace; and it seemed to have a heart in it, 
+when there was no such matter. In good truth, he was a wondrous 
+man; and when his tongue had acquired him all other imaginable 
+success- when it had been heard in halls of state, and in the courts of 
+princes and potentates--after it had made him known all over the 
+world, even as a voice crying from shore to shore--it finally per-
+suaded his countrymen to select him for the Presidency. Before this 
+time- indeed, as soon as he began to grow celebrated--his admirers 
+had found out the resemblance between him and the Great Stone 
+Face; and so much were they struck by it, that throughout the country 
+this distinguished gentleman was known by the name of Old Stony 
+Phiz. The phrase was considered as giving a highly favorable aspect 
+to his political prospects; for, as is likewise the case with the 
+Popedom, nobody ever becomes President without taking a name 
+other than his own.
+
+While his friends were doing their best to make him President, Old 
+Stony Phiz, as he was called, set out on a visit to the valley where he 
+was born. Of course, he had no other object than to shake hands with 
+his fellow-citizens, and neither thought nor cared about any effect 
+which his progress through the country might have upon the election. 
+Magnificent preparations were made to receive the illustrious 
+statesman; a cavalcade of horsemen set forth to meet him at the 
+boundary line of the State, and all the people left their business and 
+gathered along the wayside to see him pass. Among these was Ernest. 
+Though more than once disappointed, as we have seen, he had such a 
+hopeful and confiding nature, that he was always ready to believe in 
+whatever seemed beautiful and good.
+
+He kept his heart continually open, and thus was sure to catch the 
+blessing from on high when it should come. So now again, as 
+buoyantly as ever, he went forth to behold the likeness of the Great 
+Stone Face.
+
+The cavalcade came prancing along the road, with a great clattering 
+of hoofs and a mighty cloud of dust, which rose up so dense and high 
+that the visage of the mountainside was completely hidden from 
+Ernest's eyes. All the great men of the neighborhood were there on 
+horseback; militia officers, in uniform; the member of Congress; the 
+sheriff of the county; the editors of newspapers; and many a farmer, 
+too, had mounted his patient steed, with his Sunday coat upon his 
+back. It really was a very brilliant spectacle, especially as there were 
+numerous banners flaunting over the cavalcade, on some of which 
+were gorgeous portraits of the illustrious statesman and the Great 
+Stone Face, smiling familiarly at one another, like two brothers. If the 
+pictures were to be trusted, the mutual resemblance, it must be 
+confessed, was marvellous. We must not forget to mention that there 
+was a band of music, which made the echoes of the mountains ring 
+and reverberate with the loud triumph of its strains; so that airy and 
+soul-thrilling melodies broke out among all the heights and hollows, 
+as if every nook of his native valley had found a voice, to welcome 
+the distinguished guest. But the grandest effect was when the far-off 
+mountain precipice flung back the music; for then the Great Stone 
+Face itself seemed to be swelling the triumphant chorus, in 
+acknowledgment, that, at length, the man of prophecy was come.
+
+All this while the people were throwing up their hats and shouting, 
+with enthusiasm so contagious that the heart of Ernest kindled up, and 
+he likewise threw up his hat, and shouted, as loudly as the loudest, 
+'Huzza for the great man! Huzza for Old Stony Phiz!' But as yet he 
+had not seen him.
+
+'Here he is, now!' cried those who stood near Ernest. 'There! There! 
+Look at Old Stony Phiz and then at the Old Man of the Mountain, and 
+see if they are not as like as two twin brothers!'
+
+In the midst of all this gallant array came an open barouche, drawn by 
+four white horses; and in the barouche, with his massive head 
+uncovered, sat the illustrious statesman, Old Stony Phiz himself.
+
+'Confess it,' said one of Ernest's neighbors to him, 'the Great Stone 
+Face has met its match at last!'
+
+Now, it must be owned that, at his first glimpse of the countenance 
+which was bowing and smiling from the barouche, Ernest did fancy 
+that there was a resemblance between it and the old familiar face 
+upon the mountainside. The brow, with its massive depth and 
+loftiness, and all the other features, indeed, were boldly and strongly 
+hewn, as if in emulation of a more than heroic, of a Titanic model. 
+But the sublimity and stateliness, the grand expression of a divine 
+sympathy, that illuminated the mountain visage and etherealized its 
+ponderous granite substance into spirit, might here be sought in vain. 
+Something had been originally left out, or had departed. And 
+therefore the marvellously gifted statesman had always a weary 
+gloom in the deep caverns of his eyes, as of a child that has outgrown 
+its playthings or a man of mighty faculties and little aims, whose life, 
+with all its high performances, was vague and empty, because no high 
+purpose had endowed it with reality.
+
+Still, Ernest's neighbor was thrusting his elbow into his side, and 
+pressing him for an answer.
+
+'Confess! confess! Is not he the very picture of your Old Man of the 
+Mountain?'
+
+'No!' said Ernest, bluntly, 'I see little or no likeness.'
+
+'Then so much the worse for the Great Stone Face!' answered his 
+neighbor; and again he set up a shout for Old Stony Phiz.
+
+But Ernest turned away, melancholy, and almost despondent: for this 
+was the saddest of his disappointments, to behold a man who might 
+have fulfilled the prophecy, and had not willed to do so. Meantime, 
+the cavalcade, the banners, the music, and the barouches swept past 
+him, with the vociferous crowd in the rear, leaving the dust to settle 
+down, and the Great Stone Face to be revealed again, with the 
+grandeur that it had worn for untold centuries.
+
+'Lo, here I am, Ernest!' the benign lips seemed to say. 'I have waited 
+longer than thou, and am not yet weary. Fear not; the man will come.'
+
+The years hurried onward, treading in their haste on one another's 
+heels. And now they began to bring white hairs, and scatter them over 
+the head of Ernest; they made reverend wrinkles across his forehead, 
+and furrows in his cheeks. He was an aged man. But not in vain had 
+he grown old: more than the white hairs on his head were the sage 
+thoughts in his mind; his wrinkles and furrows were inscriptions that 
+Time had graved, and in which he had written legends of wisdom that 
+had been tested by the tenor of a life. And Ernest had ceased to be 
+obscure. Unsought for, undesired, had come the fame which so many 
+seek, and made him known in the great world, beyond the limits of 
+the valley in which he had dwelt so quietly. College professors, and 
+even the active men of cities, came from far to see and converse with 
+Ernest; for the report had gone abroad that this simple husbandman 
+had ideas unlike those of other men, not gained from books, but of a 
+higher tone- a tranquil and familiar majesty, as if he had been talking 
+with the angels as his daily friends. Whether it were sage, statesman, 
+or philanthropist, Ernest received these visitors with the gentle 
+sincerity that had characterized him from boyhood, and spoke freely 
+with them of whatever came uppermost, or lay deepest in his heart or 
+their own. While they talked together, his face would kindle, 
+unawares, and shine upon them, as with a mild evening light. Pensive 
+with the fulness of such discourse, his guests took leave and went 
+their way; and passing up the valley, paused to look at the Great 
+Stone Face, imagining that they had seen its likeness in a human 
+countenance, but could not remember where.
+
+While Ernest had been growing up and growing old, a bountiful 
+Providence had granted a new poet to this earth. He, likewise, was a 
+native of the valley, but had spent the greater part of his life at a 
+distance from that romantic region, pouring out his sweet music amid 
+the bustle and din of cities. Often, however, did the mountains which 
+had been familiar to him in his childhood lift their snowy peaks into 
+the clear atmosphere of his poetry. Neither was the Great Stone Face 
+forgotten, for the poet had celebrated it in an ode, which was grand 
+enough to have been uttered by its own majestic lips. This man of 
+genius, we may say, had come down from heaven with wonderful 
+endowments. If he sang of a mountain, the eyes of all mankind beheld 
+a mightier grandeur reposing on its breast, or soaring to its summit, 
+than had before been seen there. If his theme were a lovely lake, a 
+celestial smile had now been thrown over it, to gleam forever on its 
+surface. If it were the vast old sea, even the deep immensity of its 
+dread bosom seemed to swell the higher, as if moved by the emotions 
+of the song. Thus the world assumed another and a better aspect from 
+the hour that the poet blessed it with his happy eyes. The Creator had 
+bestowed him, as the last best touch to his own handiwork. Creation 
+was not finished till the poet came to interpret, and so complete it.
+
+The effect was no less high and beautiful, when his human brethren 
+were the subject of his verse. The man or woman, sordid with the 
+common dust of life, who crossed his daily path, and the little child 
+who played in it, were glorified if they beheld him in his mood of 
+poetic faith. He showed the golden links of the great chain that 
+intertwined them with an angelic kindred; he brought out the hidden 
+traits of a celestial birth that made them worthy of such kin. Some, 
+indeed, there were, who thought to show the soundness of their judg-
+ment by affirming that all the beauty and dignity of the natural world 
+existed only in the poet's fancy. Let such men speak for themselves, 
+who undoubtedly appear to have been spawned forth by Nature with a 
+contemptuous bitterness; she plastered them up out of her refuse stuff, 
+after all the swine were made. As respects all things else, the peet's 
+ideal was the truest truth.
+
+The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. He read them after 
+his customary toil, seated on the bench before his cottage-door, where 
+for such a length of time he had filled his repose with thought, by 
+gazing at the Great Stone Face. And now as he read stanzas that 
+caused the soul to thrill within him, he lifted his eyes to the vast 
+countenance beaming on him so benignantly.
+
+'O majestic friend,' he murmured, addressing the Great Stone Face, 'is 
+not this man worthy to resemble thee?'
+
+The face seemed to smile, but answered not a word.
+
+Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt so far away, had not 
+only heard of Ernest, but had meditated much upon his character, 
+until he deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, whose 
+untaught wisdom walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of 
+his life.
+
+One
+summer morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and, in 
+the decline of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great 
+distance from Ernest's cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly 
+been the palace of Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, 
+with his carpetbag on his arm, inquired at once where Ernest dwelt, 
+and was resolved to be accepted as his guest.
+
+Approaching the door, he there found the good old man, holding a 
+volume in his hand, which alternately he read, and then, with a finger 
+between the leaves, looked lovingly at the Great Stone Face.
+
+'Good evening,' said the poet. 'Can you give a traveller a night's 
+lodging?'
+
+'Willingly,' answered Ernest; and then he added, smiling, 'Methinks I 
+never saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger.'
+
+The poet sat down on"the bench beside him, and he and Ernest talked 
+together. Often had the poet held intercourse with the wittiest and the 
+wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughts and 
+feelings gushed up with such a natural feeling, and who made great 
+truths so familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, as had 
+been so often said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labor in 
+the fields; angels seemed to have sat with him by the fireside; and, 
+dwelling with angels as friend with friends, he had imbibed the 
+sublimity of their ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and lowly 
+charm of household words. So thought the poet. And Ernest, on the 
+other hand, was moved and agitated by the living images which the 
+poet flung out of his mind, and which peopled all the air about the 
+cottage-door with shapes of beauty, both gay and pensive. The 
+sympathies of these two men instructed them with a profounder sense 
+than either could have attained alone. Their minds accorded into one 
+strain, and made delightful music which neither of them could have 
+claimed as all his own, nor distinguished his own share from the 
+other's. They led one another, as it were, into a high pavilion of their 
+thoughts, so remote, and hitherto so dim, that they had never entered 
+it before, and so beautiful that they desired to be there always.
+
+As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that the Great Stone Face 
+was bending forward to listen too. He gazed earnestly into the poet's 
+glowing eyes.
+
+'Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?' he said.
+
+The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been reading.
+
+'You have read these poems,' said he. 'You know me, then - for I 
+wrote them.'
+
+Again, and still more earnestly than before, Ernest examined the 
+poet's features; then turned towards the Great Stone Face; then back, 
+with an uncertain aspect, to his guest. But his countenance fell; he 
+shook his head, and sighed.
+
+'Wherefore are you sad?' inquired the poet. 'Because,' replied Ernest, 
+'all through life I have awaited the fulfilment of a prophecy; and, 
+when I read these poems, I hoped that it might be fulfilled in you.'
+
+'You hoped,' answered the poet, faintly smiling, 'to find in me the 
+likeness of the Great Stone Face. And you are disappointed, as 
+formerly with Mr. Gathergold, and old Blood-and-Thunder, and Old 
+Stony Phiz. Yes, Ernest, it is my doom.
+
+You must add my name to the illustrious three, and record another 
+failure of your hopes. For- in shame and sadness do I speak it, Ernest-
+-I am not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and majestic image.'
+
+'And why?' asked Ernest. He pointed to the volume. 'Are not those 
+thoughts divine?'
+
+'They have a strain of the Divinity,' replied the poet. 'You can hear in 
+them the far-off echo of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, 
+has not corresponded with my thought. I have had grand dreams, but 
+they have been only dreams, because I have lived -- and that, too, by 
+my own choice among poor and mean realities. Sometimes, even -- 
+shall I dare to say it?-- I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the 
+goodness, which my own works are said to have made more evident 
+in nature and in human life. Why, then, pure seeker of the good and 
+true, shouldst thou hope to find me, in yonder image of the divine?'
+
+The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears. So, likewise, 
+were those of Ernest.
+
+At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest 
+was to discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in 
+the open air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they 
+went along, proceeded to the spot. It was a small nook among the 
+hills, with a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was 
+relieved by the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants that made a 
+tapestry for the naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its 
+rugged angles. At a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich 
+framework of verdure, there appeared a niche, spacious enough to 
+admit a human figure, with freedom for such gestures as 
+spontaneously accompany earnest thought and genuine emotion. Into 
+this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a look of familiar 
+kindness around upon his audience. They stood, or sat, or reclined 
+upon the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing sunshine 
+falling obliquely over them, and mingling its subdued cheerfulness 
+with the solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, beneath and amid the 
+boughs of which the golden rays were constrained to pass. In another 
+direction was seen the Great Stone Face, with the same cheer, 
+combined with the same solemnity, in its benignant aspect.
+
+"Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in his heart 
+and mind. His words had power, because they accorded with his 
+thoughts; and his thoughts had reality and depth, because they 
+harmonized with the life which he had always lived. It was not mere 
+breath that this preacher uttered; they were the words of life, because 
+a life of good deeds and holy love was melted into them. Pearls, pure 
+and rich, had been dissolved into this precious draught. The poet, as 
+he listened, felt that the being and character of Ernest were a nobler 
+strain of poetry than he had ever written.
+
+His eyes glistening with tears, he gazed reverentially at the venerable 
+man, and said within himself that never was there an aspect so worthy 
+of a prophet and a sage as that mild, sweet, thoughtful countenance, 
+with the glory of white hair diffused about it. At a distance, but 
+distinctly to be seen, high up in the golden light of the setting sun, 
+appeared the Great Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the 
+white hairs around .the brow' of Ernest. Its look of grand beneficence 
+seemed to embrace the world.
+
+At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to 
+utter, the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued 
+with benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his 
+arms aloft and shouted-
+
+'Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone 
+Face!'
+
+Then all the people looked and saw that what the deep-sighted poet 
+said was true. The prophecy was fulfilled. But Ernest, having finished 
+what he had to say, took the poet's arm, and walked slowly 
+homeward, still hoping that some wiser and better man than himself 
+would by and by appear, bearing a resemblance to the GREAT 
+STONE FACE.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE AMBITIOUS GUEST
+
+One September night a family had gathered round their hearth, and 
+piled it high with the driftwood of mountain streams, the dry cones of 
+the pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing 
+down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened 
+the room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had 
+a sober gladness; the children laughed; the eldest daughter was the 
+image of Happiness at seventeen; and the aged grandmother who sat 
+knitting in the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old. 
+They had found the 'herb, heart's-ease,' in the bleakest spot of all New 
+England. (This family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills, 
+where the wind was sharp throughout the year, and pitilessly cold in 
+the winter- giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it 
+descended on the valley of the Saco) They dwelt in a cold spot and a 
+dangerous one; for a mountain towered above their heads, so steep, 
+that the stones would often rumble down its sides and startle them at 
+midnight.
+
+The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all 
+with mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to 
+pause before their cottage- rattling the door, with a sound of wailing 
+and lamentation, before it passed into the valley. For a moment it 
+saddened them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But 
+the family were glad again when they perceived that the latch was 
+lifted by some traveller, whose footsteps had been unheard amid the 
+dreary blast which heralded his approach, and wailed as he was 
+entering, and went moaning away from the door.
+
+Though they dwelt {n such a solitude, these people held daily 
+converse with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great 
+artery, through which the life-blood of internal commerce is 
+continually throbbing between Maine, on one side, and the Green 
+Mountains and the shores of the St. Lawrence, on the other. The 
+stage-coach always drew up before the door of the cottage. The 
+wayfarer, with no companion but his staff, paused here to exchange a 
+word, that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him ere 
+he could pass through the cleft of the mountain, or reach the first 
+house in the valley. And here the teamster, on his way to Portland 
+market, would put up for the night; and, if a bachelor, might sit an 
+hour beyond the usual bedtime, and steal a kiss from the mountain 
+maid at parting. It was one of those primitive taverns where the 
+traveller pays only for food and lodging, but meets with a homely 
+kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps were heard, therefore, 
+between the outer door and the inner one, the whole family rose up, 
+grandmother, children, and all, as if about to welcome some one who 
+belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with theirs.
+
+The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the 
+melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a 
+wild and bleak road, at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up 
+when he saw the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart 
+spring forward to meet them all, from the old woman, who wiped a 
+chair with her apron, to the little child that held out its arms to him. 
+One glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent 
+familiarity with the eldest daughter.
+ 
+'Ah, this fire is the right thing!' cried he; 'especially when there is 
+such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed; for the Notch is 
+just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible 
+blast in my face all the way from Bartlett.'
+
+'Then you are going towards Vermont?' said the master of the house, 
+as he helped to take a light knapsack off the young man's shoulders.
+
+'Yes; to Burlington, and far enough beyond,' replied he. 'I meant to 
+have been at Ethan Crawford's tonight; but a pedestrian lingers along 
+such a road as this. It is no matter; for, when I saw this good fire, and 
+all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose for 
+me, and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you, and 
+make myself at home.'
+
+The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when 
+something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the 
+steep side of the mountain, as with long and rapid strides, and taking 
+such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice. 
+The family held their breath, because they knew the sound, and their 
+guest held his by instinct.
+
+'The old mountain has thrown a stone at us, for fear we should forget 
+him,' said the landlord, recovering himself. 'He sometimes nods his 
+head and threatens to come down; but we are old neighbors, and 
+agree together pretty well upon the whole. Besides we have a sure 
+place of refuge hard by if he should be coming in good earnest.'
+
+Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's 
+meat; and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed himself on 
+a footing of kindness with the whole family, so that they talked as 
+freely together as if he belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a 
+proud, yet gentle spirit -- haughty and reserved among the rich and 
+great; but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door, and 
+be like a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside. In the household 
+of the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading 
+intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth, which 
+they had gathered when they little thought of it from the mountain 
+peaks and chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and 
+dangerous abode. He had travelled far and alone; his whole life, 
+indeed, had been a solitary path; for, with the lofty caution of his 
+nature, he had kept himself apart from those who might otherwise 
+have been his companions. The family, too, though so kind and 
+hospitable, had that consciousness of unity among themselves, and 
+separation from the world at large, which, in every domestic circle, 
+should still keep a holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this 
+evening a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined and educated 
+youth to pour out his heart before the simple mountaineers, and 
+constrained them to answer him with the same free confidence. And 
+thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a common fate a closer 
+tie than that of birth?
+
+The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted 
+ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not 
+to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to 
+hope; and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty, that, 
+obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his 
+pathway- though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when 
+posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the 
+present, they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening 
+as meaner glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed 
+from his cradle to his tomb with none to recognize him.
+
+'As yet,' cried the stranger -- his cheek glowing and his eye flashing 
+with enthusiasm- 'as yet, I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from 
+the earth tomorrow, none would know so much of me as you: that a 
+nameless youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and 
+opened his heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch 
+by sunrise, and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, 'Who was 
+he? Whither did the wanderer go?' But I cannot die till I have 
+achieved my destiny. Then, let Death come! I shall have built my 
+monument!'
+
+There was a continual flow of natural emotion, gushing forth amid 
+abstracted reverie, which enabled the family to understand this young 
+man's sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick 
+sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had 
+been betrayed.
+
+'You laugh at me,' said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand, and 
+laughing himself. 'You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were 
+to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington, only that 
+people might spy at me from the country round about. And, truly, that 
+would be a noble pedestal for a man's statue!'
+
+' It is better to sit here by this fire,' answered the girl, blushing, 'and be 
+comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us.'
+
+'I suppose,' Said her father, after a fit of musing, ' there is something 
+natural in what the young man
+says; and if my mind had been turned that way, I might have felt just 
+the same. It is strange, wife, how his talk has set my head running on 
+things that are pretty certain never to come to pass.'
+
+'Perhaps they may,' observed the wife. 'Is the man thinking what he 
+will do when he is a widower? '
+
+'No, no!' cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness. 'When 
+I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine, too. But I was wishing 
+we had a good farm in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Littleton, or some 
+other township round the White Mountains; but not where they could 
+tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors 
+and be called Squire, and sent to General Court for a term or two; for 
+a plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer. And 
+when I should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman, so 
+as not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and 
+leave you all crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as 
+well as a marble one -- with just my name and age, and a verse of a 
+hymn, and something to let people know that I lived an honest man 
+and died a Christian.'
+
+'There now!' exclaimed the stranger; 'it is our nature to desire a 
+monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious 
+memory in the universal heart of man.'
+
+'We're in a strange way, tonight,' said the wife, with tears in her eyes. 
+'They say it's a sign of something, when folks' minds go a wandering 
+so. Hark to the children!'
+
+They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed 
+in another room, but with an open door between, so that they could be 
+heard talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have 
+caught the infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each 
+other in wild wishes, and childish projects of what they would do 
+when they came to be men and women. At length a little boy, instead 
+of addressing his brothers and sisters, called out to his mother.
+
+'I'll tell you what I wish, mother,' cried he. 'I want you and father and 
+grandma'm, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start right away, and 
+go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume!'
+
+Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leaving a warm 
+bed, and dragging them from a cheerful fire, to visit the basin of the 
+Flume- a brook, which tumbles over the precipice, deep within the 
+Notch. The boy had hardly spoken "when a wagon rattled along the 
+road, and stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain 
+two or three men, who were cheering their hearts with the rough 
+chorus of a song, which resounded, in broken notes, between the 
+cliffs, while the singers hesitated whether to continue their journey or 
+put up here for the night.'
+
+'Father,' said the girl, 'they are calling you by name.'
+
+But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and 
+was unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting 
+people to patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door; 
+and the lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, 
+still singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back 
+drearily from the heart of the mountain.
+
+'There, mother!' cried the boy, again. 'They'd have given us a ride to 
+the Flume.'
+
+Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy for a night 
+ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter's 
+spirit; she looked gravely into the fire, and drew a breath that was 
+almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little struggle to repress 
+it. Then starting and blushing, she looked quickly round the circle, as 
+if they had caught a glimpse into her bosom. The stranger asked what 
+she had been thinking of.
+
+'Nothing,' answered she, with a downcast smile. 'Only I felt lonesome 
+just then.'
+
+'Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people's 
+hearts,' said he, half seriously. 'Shall I tell the secrets of yours? For I 
+know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth, and 
+complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these 
+feelings into words?'
+
+'They would not be a girl's feelings any longer if they could be put 
+into words,' replied the mountain nymph, laughing, but avoiding his 
+eye.
+
+All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their 
+hearts, so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be 
+matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his; and 
+the proud, contemplative, yet kindly soul is oftenest captivated by 
+simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching 
+the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings of a 
+maiden's nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper and 
+drearier sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral 
+strain of the spirits of the blast, who in old Indian times had their 
+dwelling among these mountains, and made their heights and recesses 
+a sacred region. There was a wail along the road, as if a funeral were 
+passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine branches on 
+their fire, till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering 
+once again a scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered 
+about them fondly, and caressed them all. There were the little faces 
+of the children, peeping from their bed apart, and here the father's 
+frame of strength, the mother's subdued and careful mien, the high-
+browed youth, the budding girl, and the good old grandam, still 
+knitting in the warmest place. The aged woman looked up from her 
+task, and, with fingers ever busy, was the next to speak.
+
+'Old folks have their notions,' said she, 'as well as young ones. You've 
+been wishing and planning; and letting your heads run on one thing 
+and another, till you've set my mind a wandering too. Now what 
+should an old woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two 
+before she comes to her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and 
+day till I tell you.'
+
+'What is it, mother?' cried the husband and wife at once.
+
+Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle 
+closer round the fire, informed them that she had provided her grave-
+clothes some years before -- a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin 
+ruff, and everything of a finer sort than she had worn since her 
+wedding day. But this evening an old superstition had strangely 
+recurred to her. It used to be said, in her younger days, that if 
+anything were amiss with a corpse, if only the ruff were not smooth, 
+or the cap did not set right, the corpse in the coffin and beneath the 
+clods would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare 
+thought made her nervous.
+
+'Don't talk so, grandmother!' said the girl, shuddering.
+
+'Now'--continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet 
+smiling strangely at her own folly--'I want one of you, my children- 
+when your mother is dressed and in the coffin -- I want one of you to 
+hold a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a 
+glimpse at myself, and see whether all's right?'
+
+'Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments,' murmured the 
+stranger youth. 'I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking, 
+and they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in 
+the ocean- that wide and nameless sepulchre?'
+
+For a moment, the old woman's ghastly conception so engrossed the 
+minds of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the 
+roar of a blast, had grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the fated 
+group were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the 
+foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound 
+were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild 
+glance, and remained an instant, pale, affrighted, without utterance, or 
+power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all 
+their lips.
+
+'The Slide! The Slide!'
+
+The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable 
+horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage, and 
+sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot -- where, in 
+contemplation of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been 
+reared. Alas! they had quitted their security, and fled right into the 
+pathway of destruction. Down came the whole side of the mountain, 
+in a cataract of ruin. Just before it reached the house, the stream broke 
+into two branches -- shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed 
+the whole vicinity, blocked up the road, and annihilated everything in 
+its dreadful course. Long ere the thunder of the great Slide had ceased 
+to roar among the mountains, the mortal agony had been endured, and 
+the victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found.
+
+The next morning, the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage 
+chimney up the mountain side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering 
+on the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants 
+had but gone forth to view the devastation of the Slide, and would 
+shortly return, to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had 
+left separate tokens, by which those who had known the family were 
+made to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? (The 
+story has been told far and wide, and Will forever be a legend of these 
+mountains.) Poets have sung their fate.
+
+There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger 
+had been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared 
+the catastrophe of all its inmates. Others denied that there were 
+sufficient grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled 
+youth, with his dream of Earthly Immortality! His name and person 
+utterly unknown; his history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery 
+never to be solved, his death and his existence equally a doubt! 
+Whose was the agony of that death moment?
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT CARBUNCLE'
+
+A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+
+(The Indian tradition, on which this somewhat extravagant tale is 
+founded, is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought 
+up in prose. Sullivan, in his History of Maine, written since the 
+Revolution, remarks, that even then the existence of the Great 
+Carbuncle was not entirely discredited.)
+
+AT nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the 
+Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves, after 
+a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come 
+thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save one 
+youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for this 
+wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong 
+enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude 
+hut of branches, and kindling a great fire of shattered pines, that had 
+drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower 
+bank of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their 
+number, perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural 
+sympathies, by the absorbing spell of the pursuit, as to acknowledge 
+no satisfaction at the sight of human faces, in the remote and solitary 
+region whither they had ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay 
+between them and the nearest settlement, while scant a mile above 
+their heads was that black verge where the hills throw off their shaggy 
+mantle of forest trees, and either robe themselves in clouds or tower 
+naked into the sky. The roar of the Amonoosuck would have been too 
+awful for endurance if only a solitary man had listened, while the 
+mountain stream talked with the wind.
+
+The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings, and 
+welcomed one another to the hut, where each man was the host, and 
+all were the guests of the whole company. They spread their 
+individual supplies of food on the flat surface of a rock, and partook 
+of a general repast; at the close of which, a sentiment of good 
+fellowship was perceptible among the party, though repressed by the 
+idea, that the renewed search for the Great Carbuncle must make 
+them strangers again in the morning. Seven men and one young 
+woman, they warmed themselves together at the fire, which extended 
+its bright wall along the whole front of their wigwam. As they 
+observed the various and contrasted figures that made up the 
+assemblage, each man looking like a caricature of himself, in the 
+unsteady light that flickered over him, they came mutually to the 
+conclusion, that an odder society had never met, in city or wilderness, 
+on mountain or plain.
+
+The eldest of the group, a tall, lean, weather-beaten man, some sixty 
+years of age, was clad in the skins of wild animals, whose fashion of 
+dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf, and the bear, had 
+long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those ill-
+fated mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom, in their early youth, 
+the Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness, and became the 
+passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew 
+him as the Seeker and by no other name. As none could remember 
+when he first took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of 
+the Saco, that for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle, he had 
+been condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time, 
+still with the same feverish hopes at sunrise- the same despair at eve. 
+Near this miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage, wearing a 
+high-crowned hat, shaped somewhat like a crucible. He was from 
+beyond the sea, a Doctor Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried 
+himself into a mummy by continually stooping over charcoal 
+furnaces, and inhaling unwholesome fumes during his researches in 
+chemistry and alchemy. It was told of him, whether truly or not, that, 
+at the commencement of his studies, he had drained his body of all its 
+richest blood, and wasted it, with other inestimable ingredients, in an 
+unsuccessful experiment -- and had never been a well man since. 
+Another of the adventurers was Master bod Pigsnort, a weighty 
+merchant and selector Boston, and an elder of the famous Mr. 
+Norton's church. His enemies had a ridiculous story that Master 
+Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole hour after prayer time, 
+every morning and evening, in wallowing naked among an immense 
+quantity of pine-tree shillings, which were the earliest silver coinage 
+of Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall notice had no name that 
+his companions knew of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer 
+that always contorted his thin visage, and by a prodigious pair of 
+spectacles, which were supposed to deform and discolor the whole 
+face of nature, to this gentleman's perception. The fifth adventurer 
+likewise lacked a name, which was the greater pity, as he appeared to 
+be a poet. He was a bright-eyed man, but woefully pined away, which 
+was no more than natural, if, as some people affirmed, his ordinary 
+diet was fog, morning mist, and a slice of the densest cloud within his 
+reach, sauced with moonshine, whenever he could get it. Certain it is, 
+that the poetry which flowed from him had a smack of all these 
+dainties. The sixth of the party was a young man of haughty mien, 
+and sat somewhat apart from the rest, wearing his plumed hat loftily 
+among his elders, while the fire glittered on the rich embroidery of his 
+dress and gleamed intensely on the jewelled pommel of his sword. 
+This was the Lord de Vere, who, when at home, was said to spend 
+much of his time in the burial vault of his dead progenitors, 
+rummaging their mouldy coffins in search of all the earthly pride and 
+vainglory that was hidden among bones and dust; so that, besides his 
+own share, he had the collected haughtiness of his whole line of 
+ancestry.
+
+Lastly, there was a handsome youth in rustic garb, and by his side a 
+blooming little person, in whom a delicate shade of maiden reserve 
+was just melting into the rich glow of a young wife's affection. Her 
+name was Hannah, and her husband's Matthew; two homely names, 
+yet well enough adapted to the simple pair, who seemed strangely out 
+of place among the whimsical fraternity whose wits had been set agog 
+by the Great Carbuncle.
+
+Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire, sat 
+this varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single object, 
+that, of whatever else they began to speak, their closing words were 
+sure to be illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related the 
+circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a 
+traveller's tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country, and 
+had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as 
+could only, be quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, so long ago 
+as when the famous Captain Smith visited these coasts, had seen it 
+blazing far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the intervening years till 
+now that he took up the search. A third, being camped on a hunting 
+expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains, awoke at 
+midnight, and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so 
+that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They spoke of the 
+innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the spot, and of 
+the singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success from all 
+adventurers, though it might seem so easy to follow to its source a 
+light that overpowered the moon, and almost matched the sun. It was 
+observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other 
+in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a scarcely 
+hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one. As if to 
+allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian traditions 
+that a spirit kept watch about the gem, and bewildered those who 
+sought it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher hills, 
+or by calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it hung. 
+But these tales were deemed unworthy of credit, all professing to 
+believe that the search had been baffled by want of sagacity or 
+perseverance in the adventurers, or such other causes as might 
+naturally obstruct the passage to any given point among the 
+intricacies of forest, valley, and mountain.
+
+In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles 
+looked round upon the party, making each individual, in turn, the 
+object of the sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance.
+
+'So, fellow-pilgrims,' said he, 'here we are, seven wise men, and one 
+fair damsel- who, doubtless, is as wise as any graybeard of the 
+company: here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. 
+Methinks, now, it were not amiss that each of us declare what he 
+proposes to do with the Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good 
+hap to clutch it. What says our friend in the bear skin? How mean 
+you, good sir, to enjoy the prize which you have been seeking, the 
+Lord knows how long, among the Crystal Hills?'
+
+'How enjoy it!' exclaimed the aged Seeker, bitterly. 'I hope for no 
+enjoyment from it; that folly has passed long ago! I keep up the 
+search for this accursed stone because the vain ambition of my youth 
+has become a fate upon me in old age. The pursuit alone is my 
+strength- the energy of my soul- the warmth of my blood- and the pith 
+and marrow of my bones! Were I to turn my back upon it I should fall 
+down dead on the hither side of the Notch, which is the gateway of 
+this mountain region. Yet not to have my wasted lifetime back again 
+would I give up my hopes of the Great Carbuncle! Having found it, i 
+shall bear it to a certain cavern that I wot of, and there, grasping it in 
+my arms, lie down and die, and keep it buried with me forever.'
+
+'O wretch, regardless of the interests of science!' cried Doctor 
+Cacaphodel, with philosophic indignation. 'Thou art not worthy to 
+behold, even from afar off, the lustre of this most precious gem that 
+ever was concocted in the laboratory of Nature. Mine is the sole 
+purpose for which a wise man may desire the possession of the Great 
+Carbuncle. 
+
+Immediately on obtaining it -- for I have a presentiment, good people, 
+that the prize is reserved to crown my scientific reputation -- I shall 
+return to Europe, and employ my remaining years in reducing it to its 
+first elements. A portion of the stone will I grind to impalpable 
+powder; other parts shall be dissolved in acids, or whatever solvents 
+will act upon so admirable a composition; and the remainder I design 
+to melt in the crucible, or set on fire with the blow-pipe. By these 
+various methods I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow 
+the result of my labors upon the world in a folio volume.'
+
+'Excellent!' quoth the man with the spectacles. 'Nor need you hesitate, 
+learned sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem; since 
+the perusal of your folio may teach every mother's son of us to 
+concoct a Great Carbuncle of his own.'
+
+'But, verily,' said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, 'for mine own part I object 
+to the making of these counterfeits, as being calculated to reduce the 
+marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, sirs, I have an 
+interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my regular traffic, 
+leaving my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and putting my credit 
+to great hazard, and, furthermore, have put myself in peril of death or 
+captivity by the accursed heathen savages--and all this without daring 
+to ask the prayers of the congregation, because the quest for the Great 
+Carbuncle is deemed little better than a traffic with the Evil One. 
+Now think ye that I would have done this grievous wrong to my soul, 
+body, reputation, and estate, without a reasonable chance of profit?'
+
+' Not I, pious Master Pigsnort,' said the man with the spectacles. 'I 
+never laid such a great folly to thy charge.'
+
+'Truly, I hope not,' said the merchant. 'Now, as touching this Great 
+Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it; but 
+be it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will surely 
+outvalue the Great Mogul's best diamond, which he holds at an 
+incalculable sum. Wherefore, I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle 
+on shipboard, and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or 
+into Heathendom, if Providence should send me thither, and, in a 
+word, dispose of the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of 
+the earth, that he may place it among his crown jewels. If any of ye 
+have a wiser plan, let him expound it.'
+
+'That have I, thou sordid man!' exclaimed the poet. ' Dost thou desire 
+nothing brighter than gold that thou wouldst transmute all this 
+ethereal lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For 
+myself, hiding the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my 
+attic chamber, in one of the darksome alleys of London. There, night 
+and day, will I gaze upon it; my soul shall drink its radiance; it shall 
+be diffused throughout my intellectual powers, and gleam brightly in 
+every line of poesy that I indite. Thus, long ages after I am gone, the 
+splendor of the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name?
+
+'Well said, Master Poet!' cried he of the spectacles. 'Hide it under thy 
+cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes, and make 
+thee look like a jack-o'-lantern!'
+
+'To think!' ejaculated the Lord de Vere, rather to himself than his 
+companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his 
+intercourse- 'to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk of 
+conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grub Street! Have not I 
+resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter 
+ornament for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame 
+for ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of 
+armor, the banners, and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and 
+keeping bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other 
+adventurers sought the prize in vain but that I might win it, and make 
+it a symbol of the glories of our lofty line? And never, on the diadem 
+of the White Mountains, did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so 
+honored as is reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres!'
+
+'It is a noble thought,' said the Cynic, with an obsequious sneer. 'Yet, 
+might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral 
+lamp, and would display the glories of your lordship's progenitors 
+more truly in the ancestral vault than in the castle hall.'
+
+'Nay, forsooth,' observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand in 
+hand with his bride, 'the gentleman has bethought himself of a 
+profitable use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking it 
+for a like purpose.'
+
+'How, fellow!' exclaimed his lordship, in surprise. 'What castle hall 
+hast thou to hang it in?'
+
+'No castle,' replied Matthew, 'but as neat a cottage as any within sight 
+of the Crystal Hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I, being 
+wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the Great 
+Carbuncle, because we shall need its light in the long winter 
+evenings; and it will be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors 
+when they visit us. It will shine through the house so that we may 
+pick up a pin in any corner, and will set all the windows aglowing as 
+if there were a great fire of pine knots in the chimney. And then how 
+pleasant, when we awake in the night, to be able to see one another's 
+faces!'
+
+There was a general smile among the adventurers at the simplicity of 
+the young couple's project in regard to this wondrous and invaluable 
+stone, with which the greatest monarch on earth might have been 
+proud to adorn his palace. Especially the man with spectacles, who 
+had sneered at all the company in turn, now twisted his visage into 
+such an expression of ill-natured mirth, that Matthew asked him, 
+rather peevishly, what he himself meant to do with the Great 
+Carbuncle.
+
+'The Great Carbuncle!' answered the Cynic, with ineffable scorn. 
+'Why, you blockhead, there is no such thing in rerum natura. I have 
+come three thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every 
+peak of these mountains, and poke my head into every chasm, for the 
+sole purpose of demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit 
+less an ass than thyself that the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug!'
+
+Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the 
+adventurers to the Crystal Hills; but none so vain, so foolish, and so 
+impious too, as that of the scoffer with the prodigious spectacles. He 
+was one of those wretched and evil men whose yearnings are 
+downward to the darkness, instead of heavenward, and who, could 
+they but distinguish the lights which God hath kindled for us, would 
+count the midnight gloom their chiefest glory. As the Cynic spoke, 
+several of the party were startled by a gleam of red splendor, that 
+showed the huge shapes of the surrounding mountains and the rock-
+bestrewn bed of the turbulent river with an illumination unlike that of 
+their fire on the trunks and black boughs of the forest trees. They 
+listened for the roll of thunder, but heard nothing, and were glad that 
+the tempest came not near them. The stars, those dial-points of 
+heaven, now warned the adventurers to close their eyes on the blazing 
+logs, and open them, in dreams, to the glow of the Great Carbuncle.
+
+The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest 
+corner of the wigwam, and were separated from the rest of the party 
+by a curtain of curiously-woven twigs, such as might have hung, in 
+deep festoons, around the bridal-bower of Eve. The modest little wife 
+had wrought this piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking. 
+She and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped, and 
+awoke from visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed 
+light of one another's eyes. They awoke at the same instant, and with 
+one happy smile beaming over their two faces, which grew brighter 
+with their consciousness of the reality of life and love. But no sooner 
+did she recollect where they were, than the bride peeped through the 
+interstices of the leafy curtain, and saw that the outer room of the hut 
+was deserted.
+
+'Up, dear Matthew!' cried she, in haste. 'The strange folk are all gone! 
+Up, this very minute, or we shall loose the Great Carbuncle!'
+
+In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty 
+prize which had lured them thither, that they had slept peacefully all 
+night, and till the summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine; 
+while the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish 
+wakefulness, or dreamed of climbing precipices, and set off to realize 
+their dreams with the earliest peep of dawn. But Matthew and 
+Hannah, after their calm rest, were as light as two young deer, and 
+merely stopped to say their prayers and wash themselves in a cold 
+pool of the Amonoosuck, and then to taste a morsel of food, ere they 
+turned their faces to the mountainside. It was a sweet emblem of 
+conjugal affection, as they toiled up the difficult ascent, gathering 
+strength from the mutual aid which they afforded. After several little 
+accidents, such as a torn robe, a lost shoe, and the entanglement of 
+Hannah's hair in a bough, they reached the upper verge of the forest, 
+and were now to pursue a more adventurous course. The innumerable 
+trunks and heavy foliage of the trees had hitherto shut in their 
+thoughts, which now shrank affrighted from the region of wind and 
+cloud and naked rocks and desolate sunshine, that rose immeasurably 
+above them. They gazed back at the obscure wilderness which they 
+had traversed, and longed to be buried again in its depths rather than 
+trust themselves to so vast and visible a solitude.
+
+'Shall we go on?' said Matthew, throwing his arm round Hannah's 
+waist, both to protect her and to comfort his heart by drawing her 
+close to it.
+
+But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman's love of jewels, 
+and could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the 
+world, in spite of the perils with which it must be won.
+
+'Let us climb a little higher,' whispered she, yet tremulously, as she 
+turned her face upward to the lonely sky.
+
+'Come, then,' said Matthew,mustering his manly courage and 
+drawing her along with him, for she became timid again the moment 
+that he grew bold.
+
+And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, 
+now treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf 
+pines, which, by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had 
+barely reached three feet in altitude. Next, they came to masses and 
+fragments of naked rock heaped confusedly together, like a cairn 
+reared by giants in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of 
+upper air nothing breathed, nothing grew; there was no life but what 
+was concentrated in their two hearts; they had climbed so high that 
+Nature herself seemed no longer to keep them company. She lingered 
+beneath them, within the verge of the forest trees, and sent a farewell 
+glance after her children as they strayed where her own green 
+footprints had never been. But soon they were to be hidden from her 
+eye. Densely and dark the mists began to gather below, casting black 
+spots of shadow on the vast landscape, and sailing heavily to one 
+centre, as if the loftiest mountain peak had summoned a council of its 
+kindred clouds. Finally, the vapors welded themselves, as it were, into 
+a mass, presenting the appearance of a pavement over which the 
+wanderers might have trodden, but where they would vainly have 
+sought an avenue to the blessed earth which they had lost. And the 
+lovers yearned to behold that green earth again, more intensely, alas! 
+than, beneath a clouded sky, they had ever desired a glimpse of 
+heaven. They even felt it a relief to their desolation when the mists, 
+creeping gradually up the mountain, concealed its lonely peak, and 
+thus annihilated, at least for them, the whole region of visible space. 
+But they drew closely together, with a fond and melancholy gaze, 
+dreading lest the universal cloud should snatch them from each other's 
+sight.
+
+Still, perhaps, they would have been resolute to climb as far and as 
+high, between earth and heaven, as they could find foothold, if 
+Hannah's strength had not begun to fail, and with that, her courage 
+also. Her breath grew short. She refused to burden her husband with 
+her weight, but often tottered against his side, and recovered herself 
+each time by a feebler effort. At last, she sank down on one of the 
+rocky steps of the acclivity.
+
+'We are lost, dear Matthew,' said she, mournfully. 'We shall never 
+find our way to the earth again. And oh how happy we might have 
+been in our cottage!'
+
+'Dear heart! w we will yet be happy there,' answered Matthew. 'Look! 
+In this direction, the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist. By its aid, I 
+can direct our course to the passage of the Notch. Let us go back, 
+love, and dream no more of the Great Carbuncle!'
+
+'The sun cannot be yonder[ said Hannah, with despondence. 'By this 
+time it must be noon. If there could ever be any sunshine here, it 
+would come from above our heads.'
+
+'But look!' repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone. 'It is 
+brightening every moment. If not sunshine, what can it be?'
+
+Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was 
+breaking through the mist, and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, 
+which continually grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles were 
+interfused with the gloom. Now, also, the cloud began to roll away 
+from the mountain, while, as it heavily withdrew, one object after 
+another started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight, with 
+precisely the effect of a new creation, before the indistinctness of the 
+old chaos had been completely swallowed up. As the process went 
+on, they saw the gleaming of water close at their feet, and found 
+themselves on the very border of a mountain lake, deep, bright, clear, 
+and calmly beautiful, spreading from brim to brim of a basin that had 
+been scooped out of the solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its 
+surface. The pilgrims looked whence it should proceed, but closed 
+their eyes with a thrill of awful admiration, to exclude the fervid 
+splendor that glowed from the brow of a cliff impending over the 
+enchanted lake. For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery, 
+and found the long-sought shrine of the Great Carbuncle!
+
+They threw their arms around each other, and trembled at their own 
+success; for, as the legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick upon 
+their memory, they felt themselves marked out by fate and the 
+consciousness was fearful. Often, from childhood upward, they had 
+seen it shining like a distant star. And now that star was throwing its 
+intensest lustre on their hearts. They seemed changed to one another's 
+eyes, in the red brilliancy that flamed upon their cheeks, while it lent 
+the same fire to the lake, the rocks, and sky, and to the mists which 
+had rolled back before its power. But, with their next glance, they 
+beheld an object that drew their attention even from the mighty stone. 
+At the base of the cliff, directly beneath the Great Carbuncle, 
+appeared the figure of a man, with his arms extended in the act of 
+climbing, and his face turned upward, as if to drink the full gush of 
+splendor. But he stirred not, no more than if changed to marble.
+
+'It is the Seeker,' whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her 
+husband's arm. 'Matthew, he is dead.'
+
+'The joy of success has killed him,' replied Matthew, trembling 
+violently. 'Or, perhaps, the very light of the Great Carbuncle was 
+death!'
+
+'The Great Carbuncle,' cried a peevish voice behind them. 'The Great 
+Humbug! If you have found it, prithee point it out to me.
+
+They turned their heads, and there was the Cynic, with his prodigious 
+spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at 
+the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great 
+Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all the 
+scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its 
+radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet, 
+as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be 
+convinced that there was the least glimmer there.
+
+'Where is your Great Humbug?' he repeated. 'I challenge you to make 
+me see it!'
+
+'There,' said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and 
+turning the Cynic round towards the illuminated cliff. 'Take off those 
+abominable spectacles, and you cannot help seeing it!'
+
+Now these colored spectacles probably darkened the Cynic's sight, in 
+at least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people 
+gaze at an eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched them 
+from his nose, and fixed a bold stare full upon the ruddy blaze of the 
+Great Carbuncle. But scarcely had he encountered it, when, with a 
+deep, shuddering groan, he dropped his head, and pressed both hands 
+across his miserable eyes. Thenceforth there was, in very truth, no 
+light of the Great Carbuncle, nor any other light on earth, nor light of 
+heaven itself, for the poor Cynic. So long accustomed to View all 
+objects through a medium that deprived them of every glimpse of 
+brightness, a single flash of so glorious a phenomenon, striking upon 
+his naked vision, had blinded him forever.
+
+'Matthew,' said Hannah, clinging to him, 'let us go hence!'
+
+Matthew saw that she was faint, and kneeling down, supported her in 
+his arms, while he threw some of the thrillingly cold water of the 
+enchanted lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her, but could not 
+renovate her courage.
+
+'Yes, dearest!' cried Matthew, pressing her tremulous form to his 
+breast- 'we will go hence, and return to our humble cottage. The 
+blessed sunshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through our 
+window. We will kindle the cheerful glow of our hearth, at eventide, 
+and be happy in its light. But never again will we desire more light 
+than all the world may share with us.'
+
+'No,' said his bride, 'for how could we live by day, or sleep by night, 
+in this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle!'
+
+Out of the hollow of their hands, they drank each a draught from the 
+lake, which presented them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly 
+lip. Then, lending their guidance to the blinded Cynic, who uttered 
+not a word, and even stifled his groans in his own most wretched 
+heart, they began to descend the mountain. Yet, as they left the shore, 
+till then untrodden, of the spirit's lake, they threw a farewell glance 
+towards the cliff, and beheld the vapors gathering in dense volumes, 
+through which the gem burned duskily.
+
+As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, the legend 
+goes on to tell, that the worshipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave 
+up the quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to betake 
+himself again to his warehouse, near the town dock, in Boston. But, 
+as he passed through the Notch of the mountains, a war party of 
+Indians captured our unlucky merchant, and carried him to Montreal, 
+there holding him in bondage, till, by the payment of a heavy ransom, 
+he had woefully subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shillings. By 
+his long absence, moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that, 
+for the rest of his life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a 
+sixpence worth of copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned 
+to his laboratory with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he 
+ground to powder, dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible, and 
+burned with the blow-pipe, and published the result of his 
+experiments in one of the heaviest folios of the day. And, for all these 
+purposes, the gem itself could not have answered better than the 
+granite. The poet, by a somewhat similar mistake, made prize of a 
+great piece of ice, which he found in a sunless chasm of the 
+mountains, and swore that it corresponded, in all points, with his idea 
+of the Great Carbuncle. The critics say, that, if his poetry lacked the 
+splendor of the gem, it retained all the coldness of the ice. The Lord 
+de Vere went back to his ancestral hall, where he contented himself 
+with a wax-lighted chandelier, and filled, in due course of time, 
+another coffin in the ancestral vault. As the funeral torches gleamed 
+within that dark receptacle, there was no need of the Great Carbuncle 
+to show the vanity of earthly pomp.
+
+The Cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the 
+world, a miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire 
+of light, for the wilful blindness of his former life. The whole night 
+long, he would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he 
+turned his face eastward, at sunrise, as duly as a Persian idolater; he 
+made a pilgrimage to Rome, to witness the magnificent illumination 
+of St. Peter's Church; and finally perished in the great fire of London, 
+into the midst of which he had thrust himself, with the desperate idea 
+of catching one feeble ray from the blaze that was kindling earth and 
+heaven.
+
+Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years, and were fond of 
+telling the legend of the Great Carbuncle. The tale, however, towards 
+the close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full credence 
+that had been accorded to it by those who remembered the ancient 
+lustre of the gem. For it is affirmed that, from the hour when two 
+mortals had shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel 
+which would have dimmed all earthly things, its splendor waned. 
+When other pilgrims reached the cliff, they found only an opaque 
+stone, with particles of mica glittering on its surface. There is also a 
+tradition that, as the youthful pair departed, the gem was loosened 
+from the forehead of the cliff, and fell into the enchanted lake, and 
+that, at noontide, the Seeker's form may still be seen to bend over its 
+quenchless gleam.
+
+Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing as of old, and 
+say that they have caught its radiance, like a flash of summer 
+lightning, far down the valley of the Saco. And be it owned that, 
+many a mile from the Crystal Hills, I saw a wondrous light around 
+their summits, and was lured, by the faith of poesy, to be the latest 
+pilgrim of the GREAT CARBUNCLE.
+
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES FROM MEMORY
+
+THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
+
+IT was now the middle of September. We had come since sunrise 
+from Bartlett, passing up through the valley of the Saco, which 
+extends between mountainous walls, sometimes with a steep ascent, 
+but often as level as a church aisle� All that day and two preceding 
+ones we had been loitering towards the heart of the White Mountains 
+-- those old crystal hills, whose mysterious brilliancy had gleamed 
+upon our distant wanderings before we thought of visiting them. 
+Height after height had risen and towered one above another till the 
+clouds began to hang below the peaks. Down their slopes were the 
+red pathways of the slides, those avalanches of earth, stones and trees, 
+which descend into the hollows, leaving vestiges of their track hardly 
+to be effaced by the vegetation of ages. We had mountains behind us 
+and mountains on each side, and a group of mightier ones ahead. Still 
+our road went up along the Saco, right towards the centre of that 
+group, as if to climb above the clouds in its passage to the farther 
+region.
+
+In old times the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the 
+northern Indians coming down upon them from this mountain rampart 
+through some defile known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a 
+wondrous path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans, 
+was travelling up the valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside as 
+he passed, till at length a great mountain took its stand directly across 
+his intended road. He tarries not for such an obstacle, but, rending it 
+asunder a thousand feet from peak to base, discloses its treasures of 
+hidden minerals, its sunless waters, all the secrets of the mountain's 
+inmost heart, with a mighty fracture of rugged precipices on each 
+side. This is the Notch of the White Hills. Shame on me that I have 
+attempted to describe it by so mean an image -- feeling, as I do, that it 
+is one of those symbolic scenes which lead the mind to the sentiment, 
+though not to the conception, of Omnipotence.
+
+We had now reached a narrow passage, which showed almost the 
+appearance of having been cut by human strength and artifice in the 
+solid rock. There was a wall of granite on each side, high and 
+precipitous, especially on our right, and so smooth that a few 
+evergreens could hardly find foothold enough to grow there. This is 
+the entrance, or, in the direction we were going, the extremity, of the 
+romantic defile of the Notch. Before emerging from it, the rattling of 
+wheels approached behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled out of the 
+mountain, with seats on top and trunks behind, and a smart driver, in 
+a drab greatcoat, touching the wheel horses with the whipstock and 
+reining in the leaders. To my mind there was a sort of poetry in such 
+an incident, hardly inferior to what would have accompanied the 
+painted array of an Indian war party gliding forth from the same wild 
+chasm. All the passengers, except a very fat lady on the back seat, had 
+alighted. One was a mineralogist, a scientific, green-spectacled figure 
+in black, bearing a heavy hammer, with which he did great damage to 
+the precipices, and put the fragments in his pocket. Another was a 
+well-dressed young man, who carried an opera glass set in gold, and 
+seemed to be making a quotation from some of Byron's rhapsodies on 
+mountain scenery. There was also a trader, returning from Portland to 
+the upper part of Vermont; and a fair young girl, with a very faint 
+bloom like one of those pale and delicate flowers which sometimes 
+occur among alpine cliffs.
+
+They disappeared, and we followed them, passing through a deep 
+pine forest, which for some miles allowed us to see nothing but its 
+own dismal shade. Towards nightfall we reached a level 
+amphitheatre, surrounded by a great rampart of hills, which shut out 
+the sunshine long before it left the external world. It was here that we 
+obtained our first view, except at a distance, of the principal group of 
+mountains. They are majestic, and even awful, when contemplated in 
+a proper mood, yet, by their breadth of base and the long ridges which 
+support them, give the idea of immense bulk rather than of towering 
+height. Mount Washington, indeed, looked near to heaven: he was 
+white with snow a mile downward, and had caught the only cloud that 
+was sailing through the atmosphere to veil his head. Let us forget the 
+other names of American statesmen that have been stamped upon 
+these hills, but still call the loftiest Washington. Mountains are Earth's 
+undecaying monuments. They must stand while she endures, and 
+never should be consecrated to the mere great men of their own age 
+and country, but to the mighty ones alone, whose glory is universal, 
+and whom all time will render illustrious.
+
+The air, not often sultry in this elevated region, nearly two thousand 
+feet above the sea, was now sharp and cold, like that of a clear 
+November evening in the lowlands. By morning, probably, there 
+would be a frost, if not a snowfall, on the grass and rye, and an icy 
+surface over the standing water. I was glad to perceive a prospect of 
+comfortable quarters in a house which we were approaching, and of 
+pleasant company in the guests who were assembled at the door.
+
+OUR EVENING PARTY AMONG THE MOUNTAINS We stood in 
+front of a good substantial farmhouse, of old date in that wild country. 
+A sign over the door denoted it to be the White Mountain Post Office 
+-- an establishment which distributes letters and newspapers to 
+perhaps a score of persons, comprising the population of two or three 
+townships among the hills. The broad and weighty antlers of a deer, 'a 
+stag of ten,' were fastened at the corner of the house; a fox's bushy tail 
+was nailed beneath them; and a huge black paw lay on the ground, 
+newly severed and still bleeding the trophy of a bear hunt. Among 
+several persons collected about the doorsteps, the most remarkable 
+was a sturdy mountaineer, of six feet two and corresponding bulk, 
+with a heavy set of features, such as might be moulded on his own 
+blacksmith's anvil, but yet indicative of mother wit and rough humor. 
+As we appeared, he uplifted a tin trumpet, four or five feet long, and 
+blew a tremendous blast, either in honor of our arrival or to awaken 
+an echo from the opposite hill.
+
+Ethan Crawford's guests were of such a motley description as to form 
+quite a picturesque group, seldom seen together except at some place 
+like this, at once the pleasure house of fashionable tourists and the 
+homely inn of country travellers. Among the company at the door 
+were the mineralogist and the owner of the gold opera glass whom we 
+had encountered in the Notch; two Georgian gentlemen, who had 
+chilled their southern blood that morning on the top of Mount 
+Washington; a physician and his wife from Conway; a trader of 
+Burlington, and an old squire of the Green Mountains; and two young 
+married couples, all the way from Massachusetts, on the matrimonial 
+jaunt, Besides these strangers, the rugged county of Coos, in which 
+we were, was represented by half a dozen wood-cutters, who had 
+slain a bear in the forest and smitten off his paw.
+
+I had joined the party, and had a moment's leisure to examine them 
+before the echo of Ethan's blast returned from the hill. Not one, but 
+many echoes had caught up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted 
+its complicated threads, and found a thousand aerial harmonies in one 
+stern trumpet tone. It was a distinct yet distant and dreamlike 
+symphony of melodious instruments, as if an airy band had been 
+hidden on the hillside and made faint music at the summons. No 
+subsequent trial produced so clear, delicate, and spiritual a concert as 
+the first. A field-piece was then discharged from the top of a 
+neighboring hill, and gave birth to one long reverberation, which ran 
+round the circle of mountains in an unbroken chain of sound and 
+rolled away without a separate echo. After these experiments, the cold 
+atmosphere drove us all into the house, with the keenest appetites for 
+supper.
+
+It did one's heart good to see the great fires that were kindled in the 
+parlor and bar-room, especially the latter, where the fireplace was 
+built of rough stone, and might have contained the trunk of an old tree 
+for a backlog. A man keeps a comfortable hearth when his own forest 
+is at his very door. In the parlor, when the evening was fairly set in, 
+we held our hands before our eyes to shield them from the ruddy 
+glow, and began a pleasant variety of conversation. The mineralogist 
+and the physician talked about the invigorating qualities of the 
+mountain air, and its excellent effect on Ethan Crawford's father, an 
+old man of seventy-five, with the unbroken frame of middle life. The 
+two brides and the doctor's wife held a whispered discussion, which, 
+by their frequent titterings and a blush or two, seemed to have 
+reference to the trials or enjoyments of the matrimonial state. The 
+bridegrooms sat together in a corner, rigidly silent, like Quakers 
+whom the spirit moveth not, being still in the odd predicament of 
+bashfulness towards their own young wives. The Green Mountain 
+squire chose me for his companion, and described the difficulties he 
+had met with half a century ago in travelling from the Connecticut 
+River through the Notch to Conway, now a single day's journey, 
+though it had cost him eighteen. The Georgians held the album 
+between them, and favored us with the few specimens of its contents 
+which they considered ridiculous enough to be worth hearing. One 
+extract met with deserved applause. It was a 'Sonnet to the Snow on 
+Mount Washington,' and had been contributed that very afternoon, 
+bearing a signature of great distinction in magazines and annals. The 
+lines were elegant and full of fancy, but too remote from familiar 
+sentiment, and cold as their subject, resembling those curious 
+specimens of crystallized vapor which I observed next day on the 
+mountain top. The poet was understood to be the young gentleman of 
+the gold opera glass, who heard our laudatory remarks with the 
+composure of a veteran.
+
+Such was our party, and such their ways of amusement. But on a 
+winter evening another set of guests assembled at the hearth where 
+these summer travellers were now sitting. I once had it in 
+contemplation to spend a month hereabouts, in sleighing time, for the 
+sake of studying the yeomen of New England, who then elbow each 
+other through the Notch by hundreds, on their way to Portland. There 
+could be no better school for such a place than Ethan Crawford's inn. 
+Let the student go thither in December, sit down with the teamsters at 
+their meals, share their evening merriment, and repose with them at 
+night when every bed has its three occupants, and parlor, barroom, 
+and kitchen are strewn with slumberers around the fire. Then let him 
+rise before daylight, button his greatcoat, muffle up his ears, and 
+stride with the departing caravan a mile or two, to see how sturdily 
+they make head against the blast. A treasure of characteristic traits 
+will repay all inconveniences, even should a frozen nose be of the 
+number.
+
+The conversation of our party soon became more animated and 
+sincere, and we recounted some traditions of the Indians, who 
+believed that the father and mother of their race were saved from a 
+deluge by ascending the peak of Mount Washington. The children of 
+that pair have been overwhelmed, and found no such refuge. In the 
+mythology of the savage, these mountains were afterwards considered 
+sacred and inaccessible, full of unearthly wonders, illuminated at 
+lofty heights by the blaze of precious stones, and inhabited by deities, 
+who sometimes shrouded themselves in the snowstorm and came 
+down on the lower world. There are few legends more poetical than 
+that of the' Great Carbuncle' of the White Mountains. The belief was 
+communicated to the English settlers, and is hardly yet extinct, that a 
+gem, of such immense size as to be seen shining miles away, hangs 
+from a rock over a clear, deep lake, high up among the hills. They 
+who had once beheld its splendor were inthralled with an unutterable 
+yearning to possess it. But a spirit guarded that inestimable jewel, and 
+bewildered the adventurer with a dark mist from the enchanted lake. 
+Thus life was worn away in the vain search for an unearthly treasure, 
+till at length the deluded one went up the mountain, still sanguine as 
+in youth, but returned no more. On this theme methinks I could frame 
+a tale with a deep moral.
+
+The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to these superstitions of 
+the red men, though we spoke of them in the centre of the haunted 
+region. The habits and sentiments of that departed people were too 
+distinct from those of their successors to find much real sympathy. It 
+has often been a matter of regret to me that I was shut out from the 
+most peculiar field of American fiction by an inability to see any 
+romance, or poetry, or grandeur, or beauty in the Indian character, at 
+least till such traits were pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian 
+story. Yet no writer can be more secure of a permanent place in our 
+literature than the biographer of the Indian chiefs. His subject, as 
+referring to tribes which have mostly vanished from the earth, gives 
+him a right to be placed on a classic shelf, apart from the merits 
+which will sustain him there.
+
+I made inquiries whether, in his researches about these parts, our 
+mineralogist had found the three 'Silver Hills' which an Indian 
+sachem sold to an Englishman nearly two hundred years ago, and the 
+treasure of which the posterity of the purchaser have been looking for 
+ever since. But the man of science had ransacked every hill along the 
+Saco, and knew nothing of these prodigious piles of wealth. By this 
+time, as usual with men on the eve of great adventure, we had 
+prolonged our session deep into the night, considering how early we 
+were to set out on our six miles' ride to the foot of Mount 
+Washington. There was now a general breaking up. I scrutinized the 
+faces of the two bridegrooms, and saw but little probability of their 
+leaving the bosom of earthly bliss, in the first week of the honeymoon 
+and at the frosty hour of three, to climb above the clouds; nor when I 
+felt how sharp the wind was as it rushed through a broken pane and 
+eddied between the chinks of my unplastered chamber, did I 
+anticipate much alacrity on my own part, though we were to seek for 
+the 'Great Carbuncle.'
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Great Stone Face, etc., by Hawthorne
+
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