IV

More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. Ernest still dwelt in his

native valley, and was now a man of middle age. By slow 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 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 took shape in the good

deeds that dropped silently from his hand, flowered also forth in

speech. He uttered truths that molded the lives of those who heard him.

His hearers, 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 thoughts came 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 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 [v]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

hearers had no choice but to believe him; wrong looked like right, and

right like wrong. His voice, indeed, was a magic instrument: sometimes

it rumbled like the thunder; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest

music. 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,--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.

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 [v]illustrious

statesmen; 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 mountain side 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 resemblance, it must be confessed, was marvelous. We must

not forget to mention that there was a band of music, which made the

echoes of the mountains ring 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

such enthusiasm 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 [v]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

mountain side. The brow, with its massive depth and loftiness, and all

the other features, indeed, were bold and strong. But the grand

expression of a divine sympathy that illuminated the mountain visage

might here be sought in vain.

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 shouting 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."

V

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 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 wise thoughts in his mind. 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

farmer had ideas unlike those of other men, and a tranquil majesty as if

he had been talking with the angels as his daily friends. Ernest

received these visitors with the gentle sincerity that had marked 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 and shine upon them, as with a mild evening light.

When his guests took leave and went their way, and passing up the

valley, paused to look at the Great Stone Face, they imagined 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 he had

celebrated it in a poem which was grand enough to have been uttered by

its lips.

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 said, 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 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 traveler 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 conversed with the wittiest and the wisest,

but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughts and feelings

gushed up with such a natural freedom, 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. So thought the poet. And

Ernest, on the other hand, was moved 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.

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 toward the Great Stone Face; then back to his

guest. But his countenance fell; he shook his head, and mournfully

sighed.

"Wherefore are you sad?" inquired the poet.

"Because," replied Ernest, "all through life I have awaited the

fulfillment 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."

"And why?" asked Ernest. He pointed to the volume. "Are not those

thoughts divine?"

"You can hear in them the far-off echo of a heavenly song," replied the

poet. "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 speak 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 [v]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 [v]niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure. 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

over them. 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. 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.

At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter,

the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so full of

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. The man had appeared at last.