Title: The Great Stone Face
Author: Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864
Language: English
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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 contained many
thousand inhabitants. Some of these good people dwelt in log-huts, with
the black forest all around them, on the steep and difficult hillsides.
Others had their homes in comfortable farm-houses, and cultivated the
rich soil on the gentle slopes or level surfaces of the valley. Others,
again, were congregated into populous villages, where some wild,
highland rivulet, tumbling down from its birthplace in the upper
mountain region, had been caught and tamed by human cunning, and
compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories. The inhabitants of
this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many modes of life. But all
of them, grown people and children, had a kind of familiarity with the
Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift of distinguishing
this grand natural phenomenon more perfectly than many of their
neighbors.

The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature in her mood of majestie
playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a mountain by some
immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as,
when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of
the human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan,
had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad
arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its long
bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have
rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other.
True it is, that if the spectator approached too near, he lost the
outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern only a heap of
ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon another.
Retracing his steps, however, the wondrous features would again be seen;
and the farther he withdrew from them, the more like a human face, with
all its original divinity intact, did they appear; until, as it grew dim
in the distance, with the clouds and glorified vapor of the mountains
clustering about it, the Great Stone Face seemed positively to be alive.

It was a happy lot for children to grow up to manhood or womanhood with
the Great Stone Face before their eyes, for all the features were noble,
and the expression was at once grand and sweet, as if it were the glow
of a vast, warm heart, that embraced all mankind in its affections, and
had room for more. It was an education only to look at it. According to
the belief of many people, the valley owed much of its fertility to this
benign aspect that was continually beaming over it, illuminating the
clouds, and infusing its tenderness into the sunshine.

As we began with saying, a mother and her little boy sat at their
cottage-door, gazing at the Great Stone Face, and talking about it. The
child's name was Ernest.

'Mother,' said he, while the Titanic visage miled on him, 'I wish that
it could speak, for it looks so very kindly that its voice must needs
be pleasant. If I were to See a man with such a face, I should love him
dearly.' 'If an old prophecy should come to pass,' answered his mother,
'we may see a man, some time for other, with exactly such a face as
that.' 'What prophecy do you mean, dear mother?' eagerly inquired
Ernest. 'Pray tell me all about it!'

So his mother told him a story that her own mother had told to her, when
she herself was younger than little Ernest; a story, not of things that
were past, but of what was yet to come; a story, nevertheless, so very
old, that even the Indians, who formerly inhabited this valley, had
heard it from their forefathers, to whom, as they affirmed, it had been
murmured by the mountain streams, and whispered by the wind among the
tree-tops. The purport was, that, at some future day, a child should
be born hereabouts, who was destined to become the greatest and noblest
personage of his time, and whose countenance, in manhood, should bear
an exact resemblance to the Great Stone Face. Not a few old-fashioned
people, and young ones likewise, in the ardor of their hopes, still
cherished an enduring faith in this old prophecy. But others, who had
seen more of the world, had watched and waited till they were weary, and
had beheld no man with such a face, nor any man that proved to be much
greater or nobler than his neighbors, concluded it to be nothing but
an idle tale. At all events, the great man of the prophecy had not yet
appeared.

'O mother, dear mother!' cried Ernest, clapping his hands above his head,
'I do hope that I shall live to see him!'

His mother was an affectionate and thoughtful woman, and felt that it
was wisest not to discourage the generous hopes of her little boy. So
she only said to him, 'Perhaps you may.'

And Ernest never forgot the story that his mother told him. It was
always in his mind, whenever he looked upon the Great Stone Face.
He spent his childhood in the log-cottage where he was born, and was
dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in many things, assisting
her much with his little hands, and more with his loving heart. In this
manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, he grew up to be a mild,
quiet, unobtrusive boy, and sun-browned with labor in the fields, but
with more intelligence brightening his aspect than is seen in many lads
who have been taught at famous schools. Yet Ernest had had no teacher,
save only that the Great Stone Face became one to him. When the toil
of the day was over, he would gaze at it for hours, until he began to
imagine that those vast features recognized him, and gave him a smile of
kindness and encouragement, responsive to his own look of veneration.
We must not take upon us to affirm that this was a mistake, although
the Face may have looked no more kindly at Ernest than at all the
world besides. But the secret was that the boy's tender and confiding
simplicity discerned what other people could not see; and thus the love,
which was meant for all, became his peculiar portion.

About this time there went a rumor throughout the valley, that the great
man, foretold from ages long ago, who was to bear a resemblance to
the Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems that, many years
before, a young man had migrated from the valley and settled at a
distant seaport, where, after getting together a little money, he had
set up as a shopkeeper. His name but I could never learn whether it was
his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success
in life--was Gathergold.

Being shrewd and active, and endowed by Providence with that inscrutable
faculty which develops itself in what the world calls luck, he became an
exceedingly rich merchant, and owner of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomed
ships. All the countries of the globe appeared to join hands for the
mere purpose of adding heap after heap to the mountainous accumulation
of this one man's wealth. The cold regions of the north, almost within
the gloom and shadow of the Arctic Circle, sent him their tribute in the
shape of furs; hot Africa sifted for him the golden sands of her rivers,
and gathered up the ivory tusks of her great elephants out of the
forests; the east came bringing him the rich shawls, and spices, and
teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity of large
pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her
mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a
profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold
within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of Midas, in the fable,
that whatever he touched with his finger immediately glistened, and grew
yellow, and was changed at once into sterling metal, or, which suited
him still better, into piles of coin. And, when Mr. Gathergold had
become so very rich that it would have taken him a hundred years only
to count his wealth, he bethought himself of his native valley, and
resolved to go back thither, and end his days where he was born. With
this purpose in view, he sent a skilful architect to build him such a
palace as should be fit for a man of his vast wealth to live in.

As I have said above, it had already been rumored in the valley that
Mr. Gathergold had turned out to be the prophetic personage so long and
vainly looked for, and that his visage was the perfect and undeniable
similitude of the Great Stone Face. People were the more ready to
believe that this must needs be the fact, when they beheld the splendid
edifice that rose, as if by enchantment, on the site of his father's
old weather-beaten farmhouse. The exterior was of marble, so dazzlingly
white that it seemed as though the whole structure might melt away in
the sunshine, like those humbler ones which Mr. Gathergold, in his
young play-days, before his fingers were gifted with the touch of
transmutation, had been accustomed to build of snow. It had a richly
ornamented portico supported by tall pillars, beneath which was a lofty
door, studded with silver knobs, and made of a kind of variegated wood
that had been brought from beyond the sea. The windows, from the floor
to the ceiling of each stately apartment, were composed, respectively
of but one enormous pane of glass, so transparently pure that it was
said to be a finer medium than even the vacant atmosphere. Hardly
anybody had been permitted to see the interior of this palace; but it
was reported, and with good semblance of truth, to be far more gorgeous
than the outside, insomuch that whatever was iron or brass in other
houses was silver or gold in this; and Mr. Gathergold's bedchamber,
especially, made such a glittering appearance that no ordinary man would
have been able to close his eyes there. But, on the other hand, Mr.
Gathergold was now so inured to wealth, that perhaps he could not have
closed his eyes unless where the gleam of it was certain to find its way
beneath his eyelids.

In due time, the mansion was finished; next came the upholsterers, with
magnificent furniture; then, a whole troop of black and white servants,
the haringers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majestic person, was
expected to arrive at sunset. Our friend Ernest, meanwhile, had been
deeply stirred by the idea that the great man, the noble man, the man of
prophecy, after so many ages of delay, was at length to be made manifest
to his native valley. He knew, boy as he was, that there were a thousand
ways in which Mr. Gathergold, with his vast wealth, might transform
himself into an angel of beneficence, and assume a control over human
affairs as wide and benignant as the smile of the Great Stone Face.
Full of faith and hope, Ernest doubted not that what the people said
was true, and that now he was to behold the living likeness of those
wondrous features on the mountainside. While the boy was still gazing
up the valley, and fancying, as he always did, that the Great Stone Face
returned his gaze and looked kindly at him, the rumbling of wheels was
heard, approaching swiftly along the winding road.

'Here he comes!' cried a group of people who were assembled to witness
the arrival. 'Here comes the great Mr. Gathergold!'

A carriage, drawn by four horses, dashed round the turn of the road.
Within it, thrust partly out of the window, appeared the physiognomy
of the old man, with a skin as yellow as if his own Midas-hand had
transmuted it. He had a low forehead, small, sharp eyes, puckered about
with innumerable wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he made still
thinner by pressing them forcibly together.

'The very image or the Great Stone Face!' shouted the people. 'Sure
enough, the old prophecy is true; and here we have the great man come,
at last!'

And, what greatly perplexed Ernest, they seemed actually to believe that
here was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced
to be an old beggar woman and two little beggar-children, stragglers
from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held
out their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously
beseeching charity. A yellow claw the very same that had dawed together
so much wealth--poked itself out of the coach-window, and dropt some
copper coins upon the ground; so that, though the great man's name seems
to have been Gathergold, he might just as suitably have been nicknamed
Scattercopper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest shout, and evidently
with as much good faith as ever, the people bellowed 'He is the very
image of the Great Stone Face!' But Ernest turned sadly from the
wrinkled shrewdness of that sordid visage, and gazed up the valley,
where, amid a gathering mist, gilded by the last sunbeams, he could
still distinguish those glorious features which had impressed themselves
into his soul. Their aspect cheered him. What did the benign lips seem
to say?

'He will come! Fear not, Ernest; the man will come!'

The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a boy. He had grown to be a
young man now. He attracted little notice from the other inhabitants
of the valley; for they saw nothing remarkable in his way of life, save
that, when the labor of the day was over, he still loved to go apart and
gaze and meditate upon the Great Stone Face. According to their idea of
the matter, it was a folly, indeed, but pardonable, inasmuch as Ernest
was industrious, kind, and neighborly, and neglected no duty for the
sake of indulging this idle habit. They knew not that the Great Stone
Face had become a teacher to him, and that the sentiment which was
expressed in it would enlarge the young man's heart, and fill it with
wider and deeper sympathies than other hearts. They knew not that thence
would come a better wisdom than could be learned from books, and a
better life than could be moulded on the defaced example of other human
lives. Neither did Ernest know that the thoughts and affections which
came to him so naturally, in the fields and at the fireside, and
wherever he communed with himself, were of a higher tone than those
which all men shared with him. A simple soul--simple as when his mother
first taught him the old prophecy--he beheld the marvellous features
beaming adown the valley, and still wondered that their human
counterpart was so long in making his appearance.

By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and buried; and the oddest
part of the matter was, that his wealth, which was the body and spirit
of his existence, had disappeared before his death, leaving nothing of
him but a living skeleton, covered over with a wrinkled, yellow skin.
Since the melting away of his gold, it had been very generally conceded
that there was no such striking resemblance, after all, betwixt the
ignoble features of the ruined merchant and that majestic face upon the
mountainside. So the people ceased to honor him during his lifetime,
and quietly consigned him to forgetfulness after his decease. Once in
a while, it is true, his memory was brought up in connection with the
magnificent palace which he had built, and which had long ago been
turned into a hotel for the accommodation of strangers, multitudes of
whom came, every summer, to visit that famous natural curiosity, the
Great Stone Face. Thus, Mr. Gathergold being discredited and thrown into
the shade, the man of prophecy was yet to come.

It so happened that a native-born son of the valley, many years before,
had enlisted as a soldier, and, after a great deal of hard fighting,
had now become an illustrious commander. Whatever he may be called in
history, he was known in camps and on the battlefield under the nickname
of Old Blood-and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now infirm with
age and wounds, and weary of the turmoil of a military life, and of the
roll of the drum and the clangor of the trumpet, that had so long been
ringing in his ears, had lately signified a purpose of returning to his
native valley, hoping to find repose where he remembered to have left
it. The inhabitants, his old neighbors and their grown-up children, were
resolved to welcome the renowned warrior with a salute of cannon and a
public dinner; and all the more enthusiastically, it being affirmed
that now, at last, the likeness of the Great Stone Face had actually
appeared. An aid-de-camp of Old Blood-and-Thunder, travelling through
the valley, was said to have been struck with the resemblance. Moreover
the schoolmates and early acquaintances of the general were ready to
testify, on oath, that, to the best of their recollection, the aforesaid
general had been exceedingly like the majestic image, even when a boy,
only that the idea had never occurred to them at that period. Great,
therefore, was the excitement throughout the valley; and many people,
who had never once thought of glancing at the Great Stone Face for years
before, now spent their time in gazing at it, for the sake of knowing
exactly how General Blood-and-Thunder looked.

On the day of the great festival, Ernest, with all the other people of
the valley, left their work, and proceeded to the spot where the sylvan
banquet was prepared. As he approached, the loud voice of the Rev. Dr.
Battleblast was heard, beseeching a blessing on the good things set
before them, and on the distinguished friend of peace in whose honor
they were assembled. The tables were arranged in a cleared space of the
woods, shut in by the surrounding trees, except where a vista opened
eastward, and afforded a distant view of the Great Stone Face. Over the
general's chair, which was a relic from the home of Washington, there
was an arch of verdant boughs, with the laurel profusely intermixed,
and surmounted by his country's banner, beneath which he had won his
victories. Our friend Ernest raised himself on his tiptoes, in hopes
to get a glimpse of the celebrated guest; but there was a mighty crowd
about the tables anxious to hear the toasts and speeches, and to catch
any word that might fall from the general in reply; and a volunteer
company, doing duty as a guard, pricked ruthlessly with their bayonets
at any particularly quiet person among the throng. So Ernest, being of
an unobtrusive character, was thrust quite into the background, where he
could see no more of Old Blood-and-Thunder's physiognomy than if it had
been still blazing on the battlefield. To console himself, he turned
towards the Great Stone Face, which, like a faithful and long-remembered
friend, looked back and smiled upon him through the vista of the forest.
Meantime, however, he could overhear the remarks of various individuals,
who were comparing the features of the hero with the face on the distant
mountainside.

''T is the same face, to a hair!' cried one man, cutting a caper for joy.

'Wonderfully like, that's a fact!' responded another.

'Like! why, I call it Old Blood-and-Thunder himself, in a monstrous
looking-glass!' cried a third.

'And why not? He's the greatest man of this or any other age, beyond a
doubt.'

And then all three of the speakers gave a great shout, which
communicated electricity to the crowd, and called forth a roar from a
thousand voices, that went reverberating for miles among the mountains,
until you might have supposed that the Great Stone Face had poured
its thunder-breath into the cry. All these comments, and this vast
enthusiasm, served the more to interest our friend; nor did he think of
questioning that now, at length, the mountain-visage had found its human
counterpart. It is true, Ernest had imagined that this long-looked-for
personage would appear in the character of a man of peace, uttering
wisdom, and doing good, and making people happy. But, taking an habitual
breadth of view, with all his simplicity, he contended that providence
should choose its own method of blessing mankind, and could conceive
that this great end might be effected even by a warrior and a bloody
sword, should inscrutable wisdom see fit to order matters SO.

'The general! the general!' was now the cry. 'Hush! silence! Old
Blood-and-Thunder's going to make a speech.'

Even so; for, the cloth being removed, the general's health had been
drunk, amid shouts of applause, and he now stood upon his feet to thank
the company. Ernest saw him. There he was, over the shoulders of the
crowd, from the two glittering epaulets and embroidered collar upward,
beneath the arch of green boughs with intertwined laurel, and the banner
drooping as if to shade his brow! And there, too, visible in the same
glance, through the vista of the forest, appeared the Great Stone Face!
And was there, indeed, such a resemblance as the crowd had testified?
Alas, Ernest could not recognize it! He beheld a war-worn and
weather-beaten countenance, full of energy, and expressive of an iron
will; but the gentle wisdom, the deep, broad, tender sympathies, were
altogether wanting in Old Blood-and-Thunder's visage; and even if the
Great Stone Face had assumed his look of stern command, the milder
traits would still have tempered it.

'This is not the man of prophecy,' sighed Ernest to himself, as he made
his way out of the throng. 'And must the world wait longer yet?'

The mists had congregated about the distant mountainside, and there were
seen the grand and awful features of the Great Stone Face, awful but
benignant, as if a mighty angel were sitting among the hills, and
enrobing himself in a cloud-vesture of gold and purple. As he looked,
Ernest could hardly believe but that a smile beamed over the whole
visage, with a radiance still brightening, although without motion of
the lips. It was probably the effect of the western sunshine, melting
through the thinly diffused vapors that had swept between him and
the object that he gazed at. But--as it always did--the aspect of his
marvellous friend made Ernest as hopeful as if he had never hoped in
vain.

'Fear not, Ernest,' said his heart, even as if the Great Face were
whispering him--'fear not, Ernest; he will come.'

More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. Ernest still dwelt in
his native valley, and was now a man of middle age. By imperceptible
degrees, he had become known among the people. Now, as heretofore, he
labored for his bread, and was the same simple-hearted man that he had
always been. But he had thought and felt so much, he had given so many
of the best hours of his life to unworldly hopes for some great good to
mankind, that it seemed as though he had been talking with the angels,
and had imbibed a portion of their wisdom unawares. It was visible in
the calm and well-considered beneficence of his daily life, the quiet
stream of which had made a wide green margin all along its course. Not
a day passed by, that the world was not the better because this man,
humble as he was, had lived. He never stepped aside from his own path,
yet would always reach a blessing to his neighbor. Almost involuntarily,
too, he had become a preacher. The pure and high simplicity of his
thought, which, as one of its manifestations, took shape in the good
deeds that dropped silently from his hand, flowed also forth in speech.
He uttered truths that wrought upon and moulded the lives of those who
heard him. His auditors, it may be, never suspected that Ernest, their
own neighbor and familiar friend, was more than an ordinary man; least
of all did Ernest himself suspect it; but, inevitably as the murmur of
a rivulet, came thoughts out of his mouth that no other human lips had
spoken.

When the people's minds had had a little time to cool, they were ready
enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between
General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and the benign visage
on the mountain-side. But now, again, there were reports and many
paragraphs in the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the Great
Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain eminent
statesman. He, like Mr. Gathergold and old Blood-and-Thunder, was a
native of the valley, but had left it in his early days, and taken up
the trades of law and politics. Instead of the rich man's wealth and
the warrior's sword, he had but a tongue, and it was mightier than both
together. So wonderfully eloquent was he, that whatever he might choose
to say, his auditors had no choice but to believe him; wrong looked like
right, and right like wrong; for when it pleased him, he could make a
kind of illuminated fog with his mere breath, and obscure the natural
daylight with it. His tongue, indeed, was a magic instrument: sometimes
it rumbled like the thunder; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest
music. It was the blast of war--the song of peace; and it seemed to have
a heart in it, when there was no such matter. In good truth, he was a
wondrous man; and when his tongue had acquired him all other imaginable
success--when it had been heard in halls of state, and in the courts of
princes and potentates--after it had made him known all over the world,
even as a voice crying from shore to shore--it finally persuaded his
countrymen to select him for the Presidency. Before this time--indeed,
as soon as he began to grow celebrated--his admirers had found out the
resemblance between him and the Great Stone Face; and so much were they
struck by it, that throughout the country this distinguished gentleman
was known by the name of Old Stony Phiz. The phrase was considered as
giving a highly favorable aspect to his political prospects; for, as
is likewise the case with the Popedom, nobody ever becomes President
without taking a name other than his own.

While his friends were doing their best to make him President, Old Stony
Phiz, as he was called, set out on a visit to the valley where he was
born. Of course, he had no other object than to shake hands with his
fellow-citizens, and neither thought nor cared about any effect
which his progress through the country might have upon the election.
Magnificent preparations were made to receive the illustrious statesman;
a cavalcade of horsemen set forth to meet him at the boundary line of
the State, and all the people left their business and gathered along the
wayside to see him pass. Among these was Ernest. Though more than once
disappointed, as we have seen, he had such a hopeful and confiding
nature, that he was always ready to believe in whatever seemed beautiful
and good.

He kept his heart continually open, and thus was sure to catch the
blessing from on high when it should come. So now again, as buoyantly as
ever, he went forth to behold the likeness of the Great Stone Face.

The cavalcade came prancing along the road, with a great clattering of
hoofs and a mighty cloud of dust, which rose up so dense and high that
the visage of the mountainside was completely hidden from Ernest's eyes.
All the great men of the neighborhood were there on horseback; militia
officers, in uniform; the member of Congress; the sheriff of the county;
the editors of newspapers; and many a farmer, too, had mounted his
patient steed, with his Sunday coat upon his back. It really was a very
brilliant spectacle, especially as there were numerous banners flaunting
over the cavalcade, on some of which were gorgeous portraits of the
illustrious statesman and the Great Stone Face, smiling familiarly at
one another, like two brothers. If the pictures were to be trusted, the
mutual resemblance, it must be confessed, was marvellous. We must not
forget to mention that there was a band of music, which made the echoes
of the mountains ring and reverberate with the loud triumph of its
strains; so that airy and soul-thrilling melodies broke out among all
the heights and hollows, as if every nook of his native valley had found
a voice, to welcome the distinguished guest. But the grandest effect was
when the far-off mountain precipice flung back the music; for then the
Great Stone Face itself seemed to be swelling the triumphant chorus, in
acknowledgment, that, at length, the man of prophecy was come.

All this while the people were throwing up their hats and shouting, with
enthusiasm so contagious that the heart of Ernest kindled up, and he
likewise threw up his hat, and shouted, as loudly as the loudest, 'Huzza
for the great man! Huzza for Old Stony Phiz!' But as yet he had not seen
him.

'Here he is, now!' cried those who stood near Ernest. 'There! There!
Look at Old Stony Phiz and then at the Old Man of the Mountain, and see
if they are not as like as two twin brothers!'

In the midst of all this gallant array came an open barouche, drawn by
four white horses; and in the barouche, with his massive head uncovered,
sat the illustrious statesman, Old Stony Phiz himself.

'Confess it,' said one of Ernest's neighbors to him, 'the Great Stone
Face has met its match at last!'

Now, it must be owned that, at his first glimpse of the countenance
which was bowing and smiling from the barouche, Ernest did fancy that
there was a resemblance between it and the old familiar face upon the
mountainside. The brow, with its massive depth and loftiness, and all
the other features, indeed, were boldly and strongly hewn, as if in
emulation of a more than heroic, of a Titanic model. But the sublimity
and stateliness, the grand expression of a divine sympathy, that
illuminated the mountain visage and etherealized its ponderous granite
substance into spirit, might here be sought in vain. Something had been
originally left out, or had departed. And therefore the marvellously
gifted statesman had always a weary gloom in the deep caverns of his
eyes, as of a child that has outgrown its playthings or a man of mighty
faculties and little aims, whose life, with all its high performances,
was vague and empty, because no high purpose had endowed it with
reality.

Still, Ernest's neighbor was thrusting his elbow into his side, and
pressing him for an answer.

'Confess! confess! Is not he the very picture of your Old Man of the
Mountain?'

'No!' said Ernest, bluntly, 'I see little or no likeness.'

'Then so much the worse for the Great Stone Face!' answered his
neighbor; and again he set up a shout for Old Stony Phiz.

But Ernest turned away, melancholy, and almost despondent: for this
was the saddest of his disappointments, to behold a man who might have
fulfilled the prophecy, and had not willed to do so. Meantime, the
cavalcade, the banners, the music, and the barouches swept past him,
with the vociferous crowd in the rear, leaving the dust to settle down,
and the Great Stone Face to be revealed again, with the grandeur that it
had worn for untold centuries.

'Lo, here I am, Ernest!' the benign lips seemed to say. 'I have waited
longer than thou, and am not yet weary. Fear not; the man will come.'

The years hurried onward, treading in their haste on one another's
heels. And now they began to bring white hairs, and scatter them over
the head of Ernest; they made reverend wrinkles across his forehead, and
furrows in his cheeks. He was an aged man. But not in vain had he grown
old: more than the white hairs on his head were the sage thoughts in his
mind; his wrinkles and furrows were inscriptions that Time had graved,
and in which he had written legends of wisdom that had been tested by
the tenor of a life. And Ernest had ceased to be obscure. Unsought for,
undesired, had come the fame which so many seek, and made him known in
the great world, beyond the limits of the valley in which he had dwelt
so quietly. College professors, and even the active men of cities, came
from far to see and converse with Ernest; for the report had gone abroad
that this simple husbandman had ideas unlike those of other men,
not gained from books, but of a higher tone--a tranquil and familiar
majesty, as if he had been talking with the angels as his daily friends.
Whether it were sage, statesman, or philanthropist, Ernest received
these visitors with the gentle sincerity that had characterized him from
boyhood, and spoke freely with them of whatever came uppermost, or lay
deepest in his heart or their own. While they talked together, his face
would kindle, unawares, and shine upon them, as with a mild evening
light. Pensive with the fulness of such discourse, his guests took leave
and went their way; and passing up the valley, paused to look at the
Great Stone Face, imagining that they had seen its likeness in a human
countenance, but could not remember where.

While Ernest had been growing up and growing old, a bountiful Providence
had granted a new poet to this earth. He, likewise, was a native of the
valley, but had spent the greater part of his life at a distance from
that romantic region, pouring out his sweet music amid the bustle and
din of cities. Often, however, did the mountains which had been familiar
to him in his childhood lift their snowy peaks into the clear atmosphere
of his poetry. Neither was the Great Stone Face forgotten, for the poet
had celebrated it in an ode, which was grand enough to have been uttered
by its own majestic lips. This man of genius, we may say, had come down
from heaven with wonderful endowments. If he sang of a mountain, the
eyes of all mankind beheld a mightier grandeur reposing on its breast,
or soaring to its summit, than had before been seen there. If his theme
were a lovely lake, a celestial smile had now been thrown over it, to
gleam forever on its surface. If it were the vast old sea, even the deep
immensity of its dread bosom seemed to swell the higher, as if moved by
the emotions of the song. Thus the world assumed another and a better
aspect from the hour that the poet blessed it with his happy eyes. The
Creator had bestowed him, as the last best touch to his own handiwork.
Creation was not finished till the poet came to interpret, and so
complete it.

The effect was no less high and beautiful, when his human brethren were
the subject of his verse. The man or woman, sordid with the common dust
of life, who crossed his daily path, and the little child who played in
it, were glorified if they beheld him in his mood of poetic faith. He
showed the golden links of the great chain that intertwined them with an
angelic kindred; he brought out the hidden traits of a celestial birth
that made them worthy of such kin. Some, indeed, there were, who thought
to show the soundness of their judgment by affirming that all the beauty
and dignity of the natural world existed only in the poet's fancy.
Let such men speak for themselves, who undoubtedly appear to have been
spawned forth by Nature with a contemptuous bitterness; she plastered
them up out of her refuse stuff, after all the swine were made. As
respects all things else, the poet's ideal was the truest truth.

The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. He read them after his
customary toil, seated on the bench before his cottage-door, where for
such a length of time he had filled his repose with thought, by gazing
at the Great Stone Face. And now as he read stanzas that caused the soul
to thrill within him, he lifted his eyes to the vast countenance beaming
on him so benignantly.

'O majestic friend,' he murmured, addressing the Great Stone Face, 'is
not this man worthy to resemble thee?'

The face seemed to smile, but answered not a word.

Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt so far away, had not only
heard of Ernest, but had meditated much upon his character, until he
deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, whose untaught wisdom
walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of his life.

One summer morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and,
in the decline of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great
distance from Ernest's cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly been
the palace of Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, with
his carpetbag on his arm, inquired at once where Ernest dwelt, and was
resolved to be accepted as his guest.

Approaching the door, he there found the good old man, holding a volume
in his hand, which alternately he read, and then, with a finger between
the leaves, looked lovingly at the Great Stone Face.

'Good evening,' said the poet. 'Can you give a traveller a night's
lodging?'

'Willingly,' answered Ernest; and then he added, smiling, 'Methinks I
never saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger.'

The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and Ernest talked
together. Often had the poet held intercourse with the wittiest and
the wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughts
and feelings gushed up with such a natural feeling, and who made great
truths so familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, as had
been so often said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labor in
the fields; angels seemed to have sat with him by the fireside;
and, dwelling with angels as friend with friends, he had imbibed the
sublimity of their ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and lowly charm
of household words. So thought the poet. And Ernest, on the other hand,
was moved and agitated by the living images which the poet flung out
of his mind, and which peopled all the air about the cottage-door with
shapes of beauty, both gay and pensive. The sympathies of these two men
instructed them with a profounder sense than either could have attained
alone. Their minds accorded into one strain, and made delightful
music which neither of them could have claimed as all his own, nor
distinguished his own share from the other's. They led one another, as
it were, into a high pavilion of their thoughts, so remote, and hitherto
so dim, that they had never entered it before, and so beautiful that
they desired to be there always.

As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that the Great Stone Face
was bending forward to listen too. He gazed earnestly into the poet's
glowing eyes.

'Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?' he said.

The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been reading.

'You have read these poems,' said he. 'You know me, then--for I wrote
them.'

Again, and still more earnestly than before, Ernest examined the poet's
features; then turned towards the Great Stone Face; then back, with an
uncertain aspect, to his guest. But his countenance fell; he shook his
head, and sighed.

'Wherefore are you sad?' inquired the poet. 'Because,' replied Ernest,
'all through life I have awaited the fulfilment of a prophecy; and, when
I read these poems, I hoped that it might be fulfilled in you.'

'You hoped,' answered the poet, faintly smiling, 'to find in me the
likeness of the Great Stone Face. And you are disappointed, as formerly
with Mr. Gathergold, and old Blood-and-Thunder, and Old Stony Phiz. Yes,
Ernest, it is my doom.

You must add my name to the illustrious three, and record another
failure of your hopes. For--in shame and sadness do I speak it,
Ernest--I am not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and majestic
image.'

'And why?' asked Ernest. He pointed to the volume. 'Are not those
thoughts divine?'

'They have a strain of the Divinity,' replied the poet. 'You can hear in
them the far-off echo of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, has
not corresponded with my thought. I have had grand dreams, but they have
been only dreams, because I have lived--and that, too, by my own choice
among poor and mean realities. Sometimes, even--shall I dare to say
it?---I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the goodness, which
my own works are said to have made more evident in nature and in human
life. Why, then, pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst thou hope to
find me, in yonder image of the divine?'

The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears. So, likewise,
were those of Ernest.

At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest was
to discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the open
air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went
along, proceeded to the spot. It was a small nook among the hills, with
a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the
pleasant foliage of many creeping plants that made a tapestry for the
naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a
small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure,
there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with
freedom for such gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought and
genuine emotion. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a
look of familiar kindness around upon his audience. They stood, or sat,
or reclined upon the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing
sunshine falling obliquely over them, and mingling its subdued
cheerfulness with the solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, beneath and
amid the boughs of which the golden rays were constrained to pass. In
another direction was seen the Great Stone Face, with the same cheer,
combined with the same solemnity, in its benignant aspect.

Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in his heart
and mind. His words had power, because they accorded with his thoughts;
and his thoughts had reality and depth, because they harmonized with
the life which he had always lived. It was not mere breath that this
preacher uttered; they were the words of life, because a life of good
deeds and holy love was melted into them. Pearls, pure and rich, had
been dissolved into this precious draught. The poet, as he listened,
felt that the being and character of Ernest were a nobler strain of
poetry than he had ever written.

His eyes glistening with tears, he gazed reverentially at the venerable
man, and said within himself that never was there an aspect so worthy of
a prophet and a sage as that mild, sweet, thoughtful countenance, with
the glory of white hair diffused about it. At a distance, but distinctly
to be seen, high up in the golden light of the setting sun, appeared
the Great Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the white hairs
around the brow of Ernest. Its look of grand beneficence seemed to
embrace the world.

At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter,
the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued with
benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his arms
aloft and shouted--

'Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone
Face!'

Then all the people looked and saw that what the deep-sighted poet said
was true. The prophecy was fulfilled. But Ernest, having finished what
he had to say, took the poet's arm, and walked slowly homeward, still
hoping that some wiser and better man than himself would by and by
appear, bearing a resemblance to the GREAT STONE FACE.



THE AMBITIOUS GUEST

One September night a family had gathered round their hearth, and piled
it high with the driftwood of mountain streams, the dry cones of the
pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing
down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the
room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a
sober gladness; the children laughed; the eldest daughter was the image
of Happiness at seventeen; and the aged grandmother who sat knitting in
the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old. They had found
the 'herb, heart's-ease,' in the bleakest spot of all New England. (This
family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills, where the wind
was sharp throughout the year, and pitilessly cold in the winter--giving
their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it descended on the
valley of the Saco) They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one; for
a mountain towered above their heads, so steep, that the stones would
often rumble down its sides and startle them at midnight.

The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all with
mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause
before their cottage--rattling the door, with a sound of wailing and
lamentation, before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened
them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family
were glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some
traveller, whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which
heralded his approach, and wailed as he was entering, and went moaning
away from the door.

Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse
with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery,
through which the life-blood of internal commerce is continually
throbbing between Maine, on one side, and the Green Mountains and the
shores of the St. Lawrence, on the other. The stage-coach always drew up
before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer, with no companion but
his staff, paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness
might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft
of the mountain, or reach the first house in the valley. And here the
teamster, on his way to Portland market, would put up for the night;
and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime, and
steal a kiss from the mountain maid at parting. It was one of those
primitive taverns where the traveller pays only for food and lodging,
but meets with a homely kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps
were heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the
whole family rose up, grandmother, children, and all, as if about to
welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with
theirs.

The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the
melancholy expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild and
bleak road, at nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he saw
the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring forward to
meet them all, from the old woman, who wiped a chair with her apron,
to the little child that held out its arms to him. One glance and smile
placed the stranger on a footing of innocent familiarity with the eldest
daughter.

'Ah, this fire is the right thing!' cried he; 'especially when there is
such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed; for the Notch is
just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible
blast in my face all the way from Bartlett.'

'Then you are going towards Vermont?' said the master of the house, as
he helped to take a light knapsack off the young man's shoulders.

'Yes; to Burlington, and far enough beyond,' replied he. 'I meant to
have been at Ethan Crawford's tonight; but a pedestrian lingers along
such a road as this. It is no matter; for, when I saw this good fire,
and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose
for me, and were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you, and
make myself at home.'

The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when
something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the
steep side of the mountain, as with long and rapid strides, and taking
such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice.
The family held their breath, because they knew the sound, and their
guest held his by instinct.

'The old mountain has thrown a stone at us, for fear we should forget
him,' said the landlord, recovering himself. 'He sometimes nods his head
and threatens to come down; but we are old neighbors, and agree together
pretty well upon the whole. Besides we have a sure place of refuge hard
by if he should be coming in good earnest.'

Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's
meat; and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed himself
on a footing of kindness with the whole family, so that they talked as
freely together as if he belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a
proud, yet gentle spirit--haughty and reserved among the rich and great;
but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door, and be like
a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside. In the household of
the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading
intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth, which they
had gathered when they little thought of it from the mountain peaks and
chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode.
He had travelled far and alone; his whole life, indeed, had been a
solitary path; for, with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept
himself apart from those who might otherwise have been his companions.
The family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness
of unity among themselves, and separation from the world at large,
which, in every domestic circle, should still keep a holy place where no
stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled
the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple
mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free
confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a common
fate a closer tie than that of birth?

The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted
ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not
to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed
to hope; and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty,
that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his
pathway--though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when
posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present,
they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner
glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle
to his tomb with none to recognize him.

'As yet,' cried the stranger--his cheek glowing and his eye flashing
with enthusiasm--'as yet, I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from the
earth tomorrow, none would know so much of me as you: that a nameless
youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and opened his
heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch by sunrise,
and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, 'Who was he? Whither did the
wanderer go? But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny. Then,
let Death come! I shall have built my monument!'

There was a continual flow of natural emotion, gushing forth amid
abstracted reverie, which enabled the family to understand this
young man's sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick
sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had
been betrayed.

'You laugh at me,' said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand, and
laughing himself. 'You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to
freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington, only that people
might spy at me from the country round about. And, truly, that would be
a noble pedestal for a man's statue!'

'It is better to sit here by this fire,' answered the girl, blushing,
'and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us.'

'I suppose,' Said her father, after a fit of musing, 'there is
something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been
turned that way, I might have felt just the same. It is strange, wife,
how his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty certain
never to come to pass.'

'Perhaps they may,' observed the wife. 'Is the man thinking what he will
do when he is a widower?'

'No, no!' cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness. 'When
I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine, too. But I was wishing
we had a good farm in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Littleton, or some
other township round the White Mountains; but not where they could
tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors and
be called Squire, and sent to General Court for a term or two; for a
plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer. And when I
should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman, so as not to be
long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you all
crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble
one--with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and something to
let people know that I lived an honest man and died a Christian.'

'There now!' exclaimed the stranger; 'it is our nature to desire a
monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious
memory in the universal heart of man.'

'We're in a strange way, tonight,' said the wife, with tears in her
eyes. 'They say it's a sign of something, when folks' minds go a
wandering so. Hark to the children!'

They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in
another room, but with an open door between, so that they could be heard
talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the
infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each other in wild
wishes, and childish projects of what they would do when they came to
be men and women. At length a little boy, instead of addressing his
brothers and sisters, called out to his mother.

'I'll tell you what I wish, mother,' cried he. 'I want you and father
and grandma'm, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start right away,
and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Flume!'

Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leaving a warm
bed, and dragging them from a cheerful fire, to visit the basin of the
Flume--a brook, which tumbles over the precipice, deep within the Notch.
The boy had hardly spoken when a wagon rattled along the road, and
stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three
men, who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song,
which resounded, in broken notes, between the cliffs, while the singers
hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up here for the
night.

'Father,' said the girl, 'they are calling you by name.'

But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was
unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to
patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door; and the
lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, still
singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily
from the heart of the mountain.

'There, mother!' cried the boy, again. 'They'd have given us a ride to
the Flume.'

Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy for a night ramble.
But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter's spirit;
she looked gravely into the fire, and drew a breath that was almost a
sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little struggle to repress it.
Then starting and blushing, she looked quickly round the circle, as if
they had caught a glimpse into her bosom. The stranger asked what she
had been thinking of.

'Nothing,' answered she, with a downcast smile. 'Only I felt lonesome
just then.'

'Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people's
hearts,' said he, half seriously. 'Shall I tell the secrets of yours?
For I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth,
and complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these
feelings into words?'

'They would not be a girl's feelings any longer if they could be put
into words,' replied the mountain nymph, laughing, but avoiding his eye.

All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their
hearts, so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be
matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his; and
the proud, contemplative, yet kindly soul is oftenest captivated by
simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching
the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings of a
maiden's nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier
sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain
of the spirits of the blast, who in old Indian times had their dwelling
among these mountains, and made their heights and recesses a sacred
region. There was a wail along the road, as if a funeral were passing.
To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine branches on their fire,
till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again
a scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about them
fondly, and caressed them all. There were the little faces of the
children, peeping from their bed apart, and here the father's frame of
strength, the mother's subdued and careful mien, the high-browed youth,
the budding girl, and the good old grandam, still knitting in the
warmest place. The aged woman looked up from her task, and, with fingers
ever busy, was the next to speak.

'Old folks have their notions,' said she, 'as well as young ones. You've
been wishing and planning; and letting your heads run on one thing and
another, till you've set my mind a wandering too. Now what should an old
woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before she comes to
her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till I tell you.'

'What is it, mother?' cried the husband and wife at once.

Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer
round the fire, informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes
some years before--a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and
everything of a finer sort than she had worn since her wedding day. But
this evening an old superstition had strangely recurred to her. It used
to be said, in her younger days, that if anything were amiss with a
corpse, if only the ruff were not smooth, or the cap did not set right,
the corpse in the coffin and beneath the clods would strive to put up
its cold hands and arrange it. The bare thought made her nervous.

'Don't talk so, grandmother!' said the girl, shuddering.

'Now'--continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet smiling
strangely at her own folly--'I want one of you, my children--when
your mother is dressed and in the coffin---I want one of you to hold
a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at
myself, and see whether all's right?'

'Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments,' murmured the stranger
youth. 'I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking, and
they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in the
ocean--that wide and nameless sepulchre?'

For a moment, the old woman's ghastly conception so engrossed the minds
of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar
of a blast, had grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the fated
group were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the
foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound
were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild
glance, and remained an instant, pale, affrighted, without utterance, or
power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all their
lips.

'The Slide! The Slide!'

The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable
horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage, and
sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot--where, in contemplation
of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had
quitted their security, and fled right into the pathway of destruction.
Down came the whole side of the mountain, in a cataract of ruin.
Just before it reached the house, the stream broke into two
branches--shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole
vicinity, blocked up the road, and annihilated everything in its
dreadful course. Long ere the thunder of the great Slide had ceased to
roar among the mountains, the mortal agony had been endured, and the
victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found.

The next morning, the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage
chimney up the mountain side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on
the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants
had but gone forth to view the devastation of the Slide, and would
shortly return, to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had
left separate tokens, by which those who had known the family were made
to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? (The story
has been told far and wide, and Will forever be a legend of these
mountains.) Poets have sung their fate.

There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had
been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the
catastrophe of all its inmates. Others denied that there were sufficient
grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth, with his
dream of Earthly Immortality! His name and person utterly unknown; his
history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his
death and his existence equally a doubt! Whose was the agony of that
death moment?



THE GREAT CARBUNCLE

A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

(The Indian tradition, on which this somewhat extravagant tale is
founded, is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought
up in prose. Sullivan, in his History of Maine, written since the
Revolution, remarks, that even then the existence of the Great Carbuncle
was not entirely discredited.)

AT nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the
Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves, after
a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come
thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save
one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for
this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong
enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude
hut of branches, and kindling a great fire of shattered pines, that had
drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank
of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their number,
perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies, by the
absorbing spell of the pursuit, as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the
sight of human faces, in the remote and solitary region whither they had
ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the nearest
settlement, while scant a mile above their heads was that black verge
where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest trees, and
either robe themselves in clouds or tower naked into the sky. The roar
of the Amonoosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a
solitary man had listened, while the mountain stream talked with the
wind.

The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings, and welcomed
one another to the hut, where each man was the host, and all were the
guests of the whole company. They spread their individual supplies of
food on the flat surface of a rock, and partook of a general repast; at
the close of which, a sentiment of good fellowship was perceptible among
the party, though repressed by the idea, that the renewed search for the
Great Carbuncle must make them strangers again in the morning. Seven men
and one young woman, they warmed themselves together at the fire, which
extended its bright wall along the whole front of their wigwam. As they
observed the various and contrasted figures that made up the assemblage,
each man looking like a caricature of himself, in the unsteady light
that flickered over him, they came mutually to the conclusion, that
an odder society had never met, in city or wilderness, on mountain or
plain.

The eldest of the group, a tall, lean, weather-beaten man, some sixty
years of age, was clad in the skins of wild animals, whose fashion of
dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf, and the
bear, had long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those
ill-fated mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom, in their early
youth, the Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness, and became the
passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew
him as the Seeker and by no other name. As none could remember when he
first took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of the Saco,
that for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle, he had been
condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time, still with
the same feverish hopes at sunrise--the same despair at eve. Near this
miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage, wearing a high-crowned
hat, shaped somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond the sea, a
Doctor Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried himself into a mummy by
continually stooping over charcoal furnaces, and inhaling unwholesome
fumes during his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It was told of
him, whether truly or not, that, at the commencement of his studies, he
had drained his body of all its richest blood, and wasted it, with other
inestimable ingredients, in an unsuccessful experiment--and had never
been a well man since. Another of the adventurers was Master bod
Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selector Boston, and an elder of the
famous Mr. Norton's church. His enemies had a ridiculous story that
Master Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole hour after prayer time,
every morning and evening, in wallowing naked among an immense quantity
of pine-tree shillings, which were the earliest silver coinage of
Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall notice had no name that his
companions knew of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that always
contorted his thin visage, and by a prodigious pair of spectacles, which
were supposed to deform and discolor the whole face of nature, to this
gentleman's perception. The fifth adventurer likewise lacked a name,
which was the greater pity, as he appeared to be a poet. He was a
bright-eyed man, but woefully pined away, which was no more than
natural, if, as some people affirmed, his ordinary diet was fog, morning
mist, and a slice of the densest cloud within his reach, sauced with
moonshine, whenever he could get it. Certain it is, that the poetry
which flowed from him had a smack of all these dainties. The sixth of
the party was a young man of haughty mien, and sat somewhat apart from
the rest, wearing his plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the
fire glittered on the rich embroidery of his dress and gleamed intensely
on the jewelled pommel of his sword. This was the Lord de Vere, who,
when at home, was said to spend much of his time in the burial vault of
his dead progenitors, rummaging their mouldy coffins in search of all
the earthly pride and vainglory that was hidden among bones and dust;
so that, besides his own share, he had the collected haughtiness of his
whole line of ancestry.

Lastly, there was a handsome youth in rustic garb, and by his side a
blooming little person, in whom a delicate shade of maiden reserve was
just melting into the rich glow of a young wife's affection. Her name
was Hannah, and her husband's Matthew; two homely names, yet well enough
adapted to the simple pair, who seemed strangely out of place among
the whimsical fraternity whose wits had been set agog by the Great
Carbuncle.

Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire,
sat this varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single
object, that, of whatever else they began to speak, their closing words
were sure to be illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related
the circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a
traveller's tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country,
and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as
could only, be quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, so long ago as
when the famous Captain Smith visited these coasts, had seen it blazing
far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the intervening years till
now that he took up the search. A third, being camped on a hunting
expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains, awoke at
midnight, and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so
that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They spoke of the
innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the spot, and of
the singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success from all
adventurers, though it might seem so easy to follow to its source a
light that overpowered the moon, and almost matched the sun. It was
observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other
in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a scarcely
hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one. As if to
allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian traditions
that a spirit kept watch about the gem, and bewildered those who sought
it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher hills, or by
calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it hung. But these
tales were deemed unworthy of credit, all professing to believe that
the search had been baffled by want of sagacity or perseverance in
the adventurers, or such other causes as might naturally obstruct the
passage to any given point among the intricacies of forest, valley, and
mountain.

In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles
looked round upon the party, making each individual, in turn, the object
of the sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance.

'So, fellow-pilgrims,' said he, 'here we are, seven wise men, and one
fair damsel--who, doubtless, is as wise as any graybeard of the company:
here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Methinks,
now, it were not amiss that each of us declare what he proposes to do
with the Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to clutch it.
What says our friend in the bear skin? How mean you, good sir, to enjoy
the prize which you have been seeking, the Lord knows how long, among
the Crystal Hills?'

'How enjoy it!' exclaimed the aged Seeker, bitterly. 'I hope for no
enjoyment from it; that folly has passed long ago! I keep up the search
for this accursed stone because the vain ambition of my youth has become
a fate upon me in old age. The pursuit alone is my strength--the energy
of my soul--the warmth of my blood--and the pith and marrow of my bones!
Were I to turn my back upon it I should fall down dead on the hither
side of the Notch, which is the gateway of this mountain region. Yet not
to have my wasted lifetime back again would I give up my hopes of the
Great Carbuncle! Having found it, I shall bear it to a certain cavern
that I wot of, and there, grasping it in my arms, lie down and die, and
keep it buried with me forever.'

'O wretch, regardless of the interests of science!' cried Doctor
Cacaphodel, with philosophic indignation. 'Thou art not worthy to
behold, even from afar off, the lustre of this most precious gem that
ever was concocted in the laboratory of Nature. Mine is the sole purpose
for which a wise man may desire the possession of the Great Carbuncle.

'Immediately on obtaining it--for I have a presentiment, good people,
that the prize is reserved to crown my scientific reputation--I shall
return to Europe, and employ my remaining years in reducing it to
its first elements. A portion of the stone will I grind to impalpable
powder; other parts shall be dissolved in acids, or whatever solvents
will act upon so admirable a composition; and the remainder I design
to melt in the crucible, or set on fire with the blow-pipe. By these
various methods I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow
the result of my labors upon the world in a folio volume.'

'Excellent!' quoth the man with the spectacles. 'Nor need you hesitate,
learned sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem; since
the perusal of your folio may teach every mother's son of us to concoct
a Great Carbuncle of his own.'

'But, verily,' said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, 'for mine own part I object
to the making of these counterfeits, as being calculated to reduce the
marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, sirs, I have
an interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my regular
traffic, leaving my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and putting my
credit to great hazard, and, furthermore, have put myself in peril of
death or captivity by the accursed heathen savages--and all this without
daring to ask the prayers of the congregation, because the quest for
the Great Carbuncle is deemed little better than a traffic with the Evil
One. Now think ye that I would have done this grievous wrong to my soul,
body, reputation, and estate, without a reasonable chance of profit?'

'Not I, pious Master Pigsnort,' said the man with the spectacles. 'I
never laid such a great folly to thy charge.'

'Truly, I hope not,' said the merchant. 'Now, as touching this Great
Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it; but
be it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will
surely outvalue the Great Mogul's best diamond, which he holds at an
incalculable sum. Wherefore, I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on
shipboard, and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or
into Heathendom, if Providence should send me thither, and, in a word,
dispose of the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of the earth,
that he may place it among his crown jewels. If any of ye have a wiser
plan, let him expound it.'

'That have I, thou sordid man!' exclaimed the poet. 'Dost thou desire
nothing brighter than gold that thou wouldst transmute all this ethereal
lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For myself, hiding
the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my attic chamber, in
one of the darksome alleys of London. There, night and day, will I
gaze upon it; my soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be diffused
throughout my intellectual powers, and gleam brightly in every line of
poesy that I indite. Thus, long ages after I am gone, the splendor of
the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name?'

'Well said, Master Poet!' cried he of the spectacles. 'Hide it under thy
cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes, and make thee
look like a jack-o'-lantern!'

'To think!' ejaculated the Lord de Vere, rather to himself than
his companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his
intercourse--'to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk
of conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grub Street! Have not I
resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament
for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for
ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor,
the banners, and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping
bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other adventurers sought
the prize in vain but that I might win it, and make it a symbol of
the glories of our lofty line? And never, on the diadem of the White
Mountains, did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so honored as is
reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres!'

'It is a noble thought,' said the Cynic, with an obsequious sneer. 'Yet,
might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp,
and would display the glories of your lordship's progenitors more truly
in the ancestral vault than in the castle hall.'

'Nay, forsooth,' observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand
in hand with his bride, 'the gentleman has bethought himself of a
profitable use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking it
for a like purpose.'

'How, fellow!' exclaimed his lordship, in surprise. 'What castle hall
hast thou to hang it in?'

'No castle,' replied Matthew, 'but as neat a cottage as any within sight
of the Crystal Hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I, being
wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the Great Carbuncle,
because we shall need its light in the long winter evenings; and it will
be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they visit us. It will
shine through the house so that we may pick up a pin in any corner, and
will set all the windows aglowing as if there were a great fire of pine
knots in the chimney. And then how pleasant, when we awake in the night,
to be able to see one another's faces!'

There was a general smile among the adventurers at the simplicity of the
young couple's project in regard to this wondrous and invaluable stone,
with which the greatest monarch on earth might have been proud to adorn
his palace. Especially the man with spectacles, who had sneered at all
the company in turn, now twisted his visage into such an expression of
ill-natured mirth, that Matthew asked him, rather peevishly, what he
himself meant to do with the Great Carbuncle.

'The Great Carbuncle!' answered the Cynic, with ineffable scorn. 'Why,
you blockhead, there is no such thing in rerum natura. I have come three
thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every peak of these
mountains, and poke my head into every chasm, for the sole purpose of
demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit less an ass than
thyself that the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug!'

Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the
adventurers to the Crystal Hills; but none so vain, so foolish, and so
impious too, as that of the scoffer with the prodigious spectacles. He
was one of those wretched and evil men whose yearnings are downward to
the darkness, instead of heavenward, and who, could they but distinguish
the lights which God hath kindled for us, would count the midnight gloom
their chiefest glory. As the Cynic spoke, several of the party were
startled by a gleam of red splendor, that showed the huge shapes of the
surrounding mountains and the rock-bed of the turbulent river with an
illumination unlike that of their fire on the trunks and black boughs
of the forest trees. They listened for the roll of thunder, but heard
nothing, and were glad that the tempest came not near them. The stars,
those dial-points of heaven, now warned the adventurers to close their
eyes on the blazing logs, and open them, in dreams, to the glow of the
Great Carbuncle.

The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest
corner of the wigwam, and were separated from the rest of the party by
a curtain of curiously-woven twigs, such as might have hung, in deep
festoons, around the bridal-bower of Eve. The modest little wife had
wrought this piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking. She
and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped, and awoke from
visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed light of one
another's eyes. They awoke at the same instant, and with one happy
smile beaming over their two faces, which grew brighter with their
consciousness of the reality of life and love. But no sooner did she
recollect where they were, than the bride peeped through the interstices
of the leafy curtain, and saw that the outer room of the hut was
deserted.

'Up, dear Matthew!' cried she, in haste. 'The strange folk are all gone!
Up, this very minute, or we shall loose the Great Carbuncle!'

In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty prize
which had lured them thither, that they had slept peacefully all night,
and till the summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine; while
the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish wakefulness, or
dreamed of climbing precipices, and set off to realize their dreams
with the earliest peep of dawn. But Matthew and Hannah, after their calm
rest, were as light as two young deer, and merely stopped to say their
prayers and wash themselves in a cold pool of the Amonoosuck, and
then to taste a morsel of food, ere they turned their faces to the
mountainside. It was a sweet emblem of conjugal affection, as they
toiled up the difficult ascent, gathering strength from the mutual aid
which they afforded. After several little accidents, such as a torn
robe, a lost shoe, and the entanglement of Hannah's hair in a bough,
they reached the upper verge of the forest, and were now to pursue a
more adventurous course. The innumerable trunks and heavy foliage of the
trees had hitherto shut in their thoughts, which now shrank affrighted
from the region of wind and cloud and naked rocks and desolate sunshine,
that rose immeasurably above them. They gazed back at the obscure
wilderness which they had traversed, and longed to be buried again
in its depths rather than trust themselves to so vast and visible a
solitude.

'Shall we go on?' said Matthew, throwing his arm round Hannah's waist,
both to protect her and to comfort his heart by drawing her close to it.

But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman's love of jewels,
and could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the
world, in spite of the perils with which it must be won.

'Let us climb a little higher,' whispered she, yet tremulously, as she
turned her face upward to the lonely sky.

'Come, then,' said Matthew, mustering his manly courage and drawing her
along with him, for she became timid again the moment that he grew bold.

And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now
treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines,
which, by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely
reached three feet in altitude. Next, they came to masses and fragments
of naked rock heaped confusedly together, like a cairn reared by giants
in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing
breathed, nothing grew; there was no life but what was concentrated in
their two hearts; they had climbed so high that Nature herself seemed no
longer to keep them company. She lingered beneath them, within the verge
of the forest trees, and sent a farewell glance after her children as
they strayed where her own green footprints had never been. But soon
they were to be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark the mists began to
gather below, casting black spots of shadow on the vast landscape, and
sailing heavily to one centre, as if the loftiest mountain peak had
summoned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally, the vapors welded
themselves, as it were, into a mass, presenting the appearance of a
pavement over which the wanderers might have trodden, but where they
would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed earth which they had
lost. And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth again, more
intensely, alas! than, beneath a clouded sky, they had ever desired a
glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief to their desolation when
the mists, creeping gradually up the mountain, concealed its lonely
peak, and thus annihilated, at least for them, the whole region
of visible space. But they drew closely together, with a fond and
melancholy gaze, dreading lest the universal cloud should snatch them
from each other's sight.

Still, perhaps, they would have been resolute to climb as far and as
high, between earth and heaven, as they could find foothold, if Hannah's
strength had not begun to fail, and with that, her courage also. Her
breath grew short. She refused to burden her husband with her weight,
but often tottered against his side, and recovered herself each time by
a feebler effort. At last, she sank down on one of the rocky steps of
the acclivity.

'We are lost, dear Matthew,' said she, mournfully. 'We shall never find
our way to the earth again. And oh how happy we might have been in our
cottage!'

'Dear heart! we will yet be happy there,' answered Matthew. 'Look! In
this direction, the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist. By its aid, I
can direct our course to the passage of the Notch. Let us go back, love,
and dream no more of the Great Carbuncle!'

'The sun cannot be yonder,' said Hannah, with despondence. 'By this time
it must be noon. If there could ever be any sunshine here, it would come
from above our heads.'

'But look!' repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone. 'It is
brightening every moment. If not sunshine, what can it be?'

Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was breaking
through the mist, and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which
continually grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles were interfused
with the gloom. Now, also, the cloud began to roll away from the
mountain, while, as it heavily withdrew, one object after another
started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight, with precisely the
effect of a new creation, before the indistinctness of the old chaos
had been completely swallowed up. As the process went on, they saw the
gleaming of water close at their feet, and found themselves on the very
border of a mountain lake, deep, bright, clear, and calmly beautiful,
spreading from brim to brim of a basin that had been scooped out of
the solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its surface. The pilgrims
looked whence it should proceed, but closed their eyes with a thrill of
awful admiration, to exclude the fervid splendor that glowed from the
brow of a cliff impending over the enchanted lake. For the simple pair
had reached that lake of mystery, and found the long-sought shrine of
the Great Carbuncle!

They threw their arms around each other, and trembled at their own
success; for, as the legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick
upon their memory, they felt themselves marked out by fate and the
consciousness was fearful. Often, from childhood upward, they had seen
it shining like a distant star. And now that star was throwing its
intensest lustre on their hearts. They seemed changed to one another's
eyes, in the red brilliancy that flamed upon their cheeks, while it lent
the same fire to the lake, the rocks, and sky, and to the mists which
had rolled back before its power. But, with their next glance, they
beheld an object that drew their attention even from the mighty stone.
At the base of the cliff, directly beneath the Great Carbuncle, appeared
the figure of a man, with his arms extended in the act of climbing, and
his face turned upward, as if to drink the full gush of splendor. But he
stirred not, no more than if changed to marble.

'It is the Seeker,' whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her
husband's arm. 'Matthew, he is dead.'

'The joy of success has killed him,' replied Matthew, trembling
violently. 'Or, perhaps, the very light of the Great Carbuncle was
death!'

'The Great Carbuncle,' cried a peevish voice behind them. 'The Great
Humbug! If you have found it, prithee point it out to me.'

They turned their heads, and there was the Cynic, with his prodigious
spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at
the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great
Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if
all the scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its
radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet,
as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be convinced
that there was the least glimmer there.

'Where is your Great Humbug?' he repeated. 'I challenge you to make me
see it!'

'There,' said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and
turning the Cynic round towards the illuminated cliff. 'Take off those
abominable spectacles, and you cannot help seeing it!'

Now these colored spectacles probably darkened the Cynic's sight, in at
least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people gaze
at an eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched them from
his nose, and fixed a bold stare full upon the ruddy blaze of the
Great Carbuncle. But scarcely had he encountered it, when, with a deep,
shuddering groan, he dropped his head, and pressed both hands across his
miserable eyes. Thenceforth there was, in very truth, no light of the
Great Carbuncle, nor any other light on earth, nor light of heaven
itself, for the poor Cynic. So long accustomed to View all objects
through a medium that deprived them of every glimpse of brightness,
a single flash of so glorious a phenomenon, striking upon his naked
vision, had blinded him forever.

'Matthew,' said Hannah, clinging to him, 'let us go hence!'

Matthew saw that she was faint, and kneeling down, supported her in his
arms, while he threw some of the thrillingly cold water of the enchanted
lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her, but could not renovate her
courage.

'Yes, dearest!' cried Matthew, pressing her tremulous form to his
breast--'we will go hence, and return to our humble cottage. The blessed
sunshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through our window. We will
kindle the cheerful glow of our hearth, at eventide, and be happy in its
light. But never again will we desire more light than all the world may
share with us.'

'No,' said his bride, 'for how could we live by day, or sleep by night,
in this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle!'

Out of the hollow of their hands, they drank each a draught from the
lake, which presented them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly lip.
Then, lending their guidance to the blinded Cynic, who uttered not a
word, and even stifled his groans in his own most wretched heart, they
began to descend the mountain. Yet, as they left the shore, till then
untrodden, of the spirit's lake, they threw a farewell glance towards
the cliff, and beheld the vapors gathering in dense volumes, through
which the gem burned duskily.

As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, the legend goes
on to tell, that the worshipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up the
quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to betake himself
again to his warehouse, near the town dock, in Boston. But, as he passed
through the Notch of the mountains, a war party of Indians captured
our unlucky merchant, and carried him to Montreal, there holding him
in bondage, till, by the payment of a heavy ransom, he had woefully
subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shillings. By his long absence,
moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that, for the rest of his
life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a sixpence worth
of copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned to his laboratory
with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he ground to powder,
dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible, and burned with the
blow-pipe, and published the result of his experiments in one of the
heaviest folios of the day. And, for all these purposes, the gem itself
could not have answered better than the granite. The poet, by a somewhat
similar mistake, made prize of a great piece of ice, which he found in
a sunless chasm of the mountains, and swore that it corresponded, in all
points, with his idea of the Great Carbuncle. The critics say, that, if
his poetry lacked the splendor of the gem, it retained all the coldness
of the ice. The Lord de Vere went back to his ancestral hall, where
he contented himself with a wax-lighted chandelier, and filled, in due
course of time, another coffin in the ancestral vault. As the funeral
torches gleamed within that dark receptacle, there was no need of the
Great Carbuncle to show the vanity of earthly pomp.

The Cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the world,
a miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire of light,
for the wilful blindness of his former life. The whole night long, he
would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he turned
his face eastward, at sunrise, as duly as a Persian idolater; he made
a pilgrimage to Rome, to witness the magnificent illumination of St.
Peter's Church; and finally perished in the great fire of London, into
the midst of which he had thrust himself, with the desperate idea of
catching one feeble ray from the blaze that was kindling earth and
heaven.

Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years, and were fond of
telling the legend of the Great Carbuncle. The tale, however, towards
the close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full credence
that had been accorded to it by those who remembered the ancient lustre
of the gem. For it is affirmed that, from the hour when two mortals had
shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel which would have
dimmed all earthly things, its splendor waned. When other pilgrims
reached the cliff, they found only an opaque stone, with particles of
mica glittering on its surface. There is also a tradition that, as the
youthful pair departed, the gem was loosened from the forehead of the
cliff, and fell into the enchanted lake, and that, at noontide, the
Seeker's form may still be seen to bend over its quenchless gleam.

Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing as of old,
and say that they have caught its radiance, like a flash of summer
lightning, far down the valley of the Saco. And be it owned that, many
a mile from the Crystal Hills, I saw a wondrous light around their
summits, and was lured, by the faith of poesy, to be the latest pilgrim
of the GREAT CARBUNCLE.



SKETCHES FROM MEMORY

THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

IT was now the middle of September. We had come since sunrise from
Bartlett, passing up through the valley of the Saco, which extends
between mountainous walls, sometimes with a steep ascent, but often as
level as a church aisle. All that day and two preceding ones we had been
loitering towards the heart of the White Mountains--those old crystal
hills, whose mysterious brilliancy had gleamed upon our distant
wanderings before we thought of visiting them. Height after height had
risen and towered one above another till the clouds began to hang below
the peaks. Down their slopes were the red pathways of the slides, those
avalanches of earth, stones and trees, which descend into the hollows,
leaving vestiges of their track hardly to be effaced by the vegetation
of ages. We had mountains behind us and mountains on each side, and a
group of mightier ones ahead. Still our road went up along the Saco,
right towards the centre of that group, as if to climb above the clouds
in its passage to the farther region.

In old times the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the
northern Indians coming down upon them from this mountain rampart
through some defile known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a wondrous
path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans, was travelling
up the valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside as he passed, till
at length a great mountain took its stand directly across his intended
road. He tarries not for such an obstacle, but, rending it asunder
a thousand feet from peak to base, discloses its treasures of hidden
minerals, its sunless waters, all the secrets of the mountain's inmost
heart, with a mighty fracture of rugged precipices on each side. This
is the Notch of the White Hills. Shame on me that I have attempted to
describe it by so mean an image--feeling, as I do, that it is one of
those symbolic scenes which lead the mind to the sentiment, though not
to the conception, of Omnipotence.

We had now reached a narrow passage, which showed almost the appearance
of having been cut by human strength and artifice in the solid rock.
There was a wall of granite on each side, high and precipitous,
especially on our right, and so smooth that a few evergreens could
hardly find foothold enough to grow there. This is the entrance, or, in
the direction we were going, the extremity, of the romantic defile of
the Notch. Before emerging from it, the rattling of wheels approached
behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled out of the mountain, with seats on
top and trunks behind, and a smart driver, in a drab greatcoat, touching
the wheel horses with the whipstock and reining in the leaders. To my
mind there was a sort of poetry in such an incident, hardly inferior
to what would have accompanied the painted array of an Indian war party
gliding forth from the same wild chasm. All the passengers, except a
very fat lady on the back seat, had alighted. One was a mineralogist,
a scientific, green-spectacled figure in black, bearing a heavy hammer,
with which he did great damage to the precipices, and put the fragments
in his pocket. Another was a well-dressed young man, who carried an
opera glass set in gold, and seemed to be making a quotation from some
of Byron's rhapsodies on mountain scenery. There was also a trader,
returning from Portland to the upper part of Vermont; and a fair young
girl, with a very faint bloom like one of those pale and delicate
flowers which sometimes occur among alpine cliffs.

They disappeared, and we followed them, passing through a deep pine
forest, which for some miles allowed us to see nothing but its own
dismal shade. Towards nightfall we reached a level amphitheatre,
surrounded by a great rampart of hills, which shut out the sunshine
long before it left the external world. It was here that we obtained our
first view, except at a distance, of the principal group of mountains.
They are majestic, and even awful, when contemplated in a proper mood,
yet, by their breadth of base and the long ridges which support them,
give the idea of immense bulk rather than of towering height. Mount
Washington, indeed, looked near to heaven: he was white with snow a mile
downward, and had caught the only cloud that was sailing through the
atmosphere to veil his head. Let us forget the other names of American
statesmen that have been stamped upon these hills, but still call the
loftiest Washington. Mountains are Earth's undecaying monuments. They
must stand while she endures, and never should be consecrated to the
mere great men of their own age and country, but to the mighty
ones alone, whose glory is universal, and whom all time will render
illustrious.

The air, not often sultry in this elevated region, nearly two thousand
feet above the sea, was now sharp and cold, like that of a clear
November evening in the lowlands. By morning, probably, there would be a
frost, if not a snowfall, on the grass and rye, and an icy surface over
the standing water. I was glad to perceive a prospect of comfortable
quarters in a house which we were approaching, and of pleasant company
in the guests who were assembled at the door.

OUR EVENING PARTY AMONG THE MOUNTAINS We stood in front of a good
substantial farmhouse, of old date in that wild country. A sign over the
door denoted it to be the White Mountain Post Office--an establishment
which distributes letters and newspapers to perhaps a score of persons,
comprising the population of two or three townships among the hills. The
broad and weighty antlers of a deer, 'a stag of ten,' were fastened at
the corner of the house; a fox's bushy tail was nailed beneath them; and
a huge black paw lay on the ground, newly severed and still bleeding
the trophy of a bear hunt. Among several persons collected about the
doorsteps, the most remarkable was a sturdy mountaineer, of six feet two
and corresponding bulk, with a heavy set of features, such as might be
moulded on his own blacksmith's anvil, but yet indicative of mother wit
and rough humor. As we appeared, he uplifted a tin trumpet, four or five
feet long, and blew a tremendous blast, either in honor of our arrival
or to awaken an echo from the opposite hill.

Ethan Crawford's guests were of such a motley description as to form
quite a picturesque group, seldom seen together except at some place
like this, at once the pleasure house of fashionable tourists and the
homely inn of country travellers. Among the company at the door were
the mineralogist and the owner of the gold opera glass whom we had
encountered in the Notch; two Georgian gentlemen, who had chilled their
southern blood that morning on the top of Mount Washington; a physician
and his wife from Conway; a trader of Burlington, and an old squire of
the Green Mountains; and two young married couples, all the way from
Massachusetts, on the matrimonial jaunt, Besides these strangers, the
rugged county of Coos, in which we were, was represented by half a dozen
wood-cutters, who had slain a bear in the forest and smitten off his
paw.

I had joined the party, and had a moment's leisure to examine them
before the echo of Ethan's blast returned from the hill. Not one, but
many echoes had caught up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted its
complicated threads, and found a thousand aerial harmonies in one stern
trumpet tone. It was a distinct yet distant and dreamlike symphony
of melodious instruments, as if an airy band had been hidden on the
hillside and made faint music at the summons. No subsequent trial
produced so clear, delicate, and spiritual a concert as the first. A
field-piece was then discharged from the top of a neighboring hill,
and gave birth to one long reverberation, which ran round the circle
of mountains in an unbroken chain of sound and rolled away without a
separate echo. After these experiments, the cold atmosphere drove us all
into the house, with the keenest appetites for supper.

It did one's heart good to see the great fires that were kindled in
the parlor and bar-room, especially the latter, where the fireplace was
built of rough stone, and might have contained the trunk of an old tree
for a backlog. A man keeps a comfortable hearth when his own forest is
at his very door. In the parlor, when the evening was fairly set in, we
held our hands before our eyes to shield them from the ruddy glow,
and began a pleasant variety of conversation. The mineralogist and the
physician talked about the invigorating qualities of the mountain air,
and its excellent effect on Ethan Crawford's father, an old man of
seventy-five, with the unbroken frame of middle life. The two brides and
the doctor's wife held a whispered discussion, which, by their frequent
titterings and a blush or two, seemed to have reference to the trials or
enjoyments of the matrimonial state. The bridegrooms sat together in a
corner, rigidly silent, like Quakers whom the spirit moveth not, being
still in the odd predicament of bashfulness towards their own young
wives. The Green Mountain squire chose me for his companion, and
described the difficulties he had met with half a century ago in
travelling from the Connecticut River through the Notch to Conway, now
a single day's journey, though it had cost him eighteen. The Georgians
held the album between them, and favored us with the few specimens
of its contents which they considered ridiculous enough to be worth
hearing. One extract met with deserved applause. It was a 'Sonnet to the
Snow on Mount Washington,' and had been contributed that very afternoon,
bearing a signature of great distinction in magazines and annals. The
lines were elegant and full of fancy, but too remote from familiar
sentiment, and cold as their subject, resembling those curious specimens
of crystallized vapor which I observed next day on the mountain top. The
poet was understood to be the young gentleman of the gold opera glass,
who heard our laudatory remarks with the composure of a veteran.

Such was our party, and such their ways of amusement. But on a winter
evening another set of guests assembled at the hearth where these summer
travellers were now sitting. I once had it in contemplation to spend a
month hereabouts, in sleighing time, for the sake of studying the yeomen
of New England, who then elbow each other through the Notch by hundreds,
on their way to Portland. There could be no better school for such a
place than Ethan Crawford's inn. Let the student go thither in December,
sit down with the teamsters at their meals, share their evening
merriment, and repose with them at night when every bed has its three
occupants, and parlor, barroom, and kitchen are strewn with slumberers
around the fire. Then let him rise before daylight, button his
greatcoat, muffle up his ears, and stride with the departing caravan
a mile or two, to see how sturdily they make head against the blast. A
treasure of characteristic traits will repay all inconveniences, even
should a frozen nose be of the number.

The conversation of our party soon became more animated and sincere,
and we recounted some traditions of the Indians, who believed that the
father and mother of their race were saved from a deluge by ascending
the peak of Mount Washington. The children of that pair have been
overwhelmed, and found no such refuge. In the mythology of the savage,
these mountains were afterwards considered sacred and inaccessible,
full of unearthly wonders, illuminated at lofty heights by the blaze
of precious stones, and inhabited by deities, who sometimes shrouded
themselves in the snowstorm and came down on the lower world. There
are few legends more poetical than that of the' Great Carbuncle' of the
White Mountains. The belief was communicated to the English settlers,
and is hardly yet extinct, that a gem, of such immense size as to be
seen shining miles away, hangs from a rock over a clear, deep lake,
high up among the hills. They who had once beheld its splendor were
inthralled with an unutterable yearning to possess it. But a spirit
guarded that inestimable jewel, and bewildered the adventurer with a
dark mist from the enchanted lake. Thus life was worn away in the vain
search for an unearthly treasure, till at length the deluded one went up
the mountain, still sanguine as in youth, but returned no more. On this
theme methinks I could frame a tale with a deep moral.

The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to these superstitions
of the red men, though we spoke of them in the centre of the haunted
region. The habits and sentiments of that departed people were too
distinct from those of their successors to find much real sympathy. It
has often been a matter of regret to me that I was shut out from the
most peculiar field of American fiction by an inability to see any
romance, or poetry, or grandeur, or beauty in the Indian character, at
least till such traits were pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian
story. Yet no writer can be more secure of a permanent place in our
literature than the biographer of the Indian chiefs. His subject, as
referring to tribes which have mostly vanished from the earth, gives
him a right to be placed on a classic shelf, apart from the merits which
will sustain him there.

I made inquiries whether, in his researches about these parts, our
mineralogist had found the three 'Silver Hills' which an Indian sachem
sold to an Englishman nearly two hundred years ago, and the treasure of
which the posterity of the purchaser have been looking for ever since.
But the man of science had ransacked every hill along the Saco, and knew
nothing of these prodigious piles of wealth. By this time, as usual with
men on the eve of great adventure, we had prolonged our session deep
into the night, considering how early we were to set out on our six
miles' ride to the foot of Mount Washington. There was now a general
breaking up. I scrutinized the faces of the two bridegrooms, and saw but
little probability of their leaving the bosom of earthly bliss, in the
first week of the honeymoon and at the frosty hour of three, to climb
above the clouds; nor when I felt how sharp the wind was as it rushed
through a broken pane and eddied between the chinks of my unplastered
chamber, did I anticipate much alacrity on my own part, though we were
to seek for the 'Great Carbuncle.'





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