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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

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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 aisleú 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 Q