Ewriting Format by Carl Peterson © 2001

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 in
to two paths and swept past the house on either side.

Mr. and Mrs. Willey,
their five children,
and two hired men were crushed under the weight of earth,
rocks,
and trees.In the Sketches from Memory Hawthorne gives an intimation of the tale which he might write and did afterward write of The Great Carbuncle.

The paper is interesting as showing what were the actual experiences out of which he formed his imaginative stories.



THE GREAT STONE FACE and Other Tales OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
THE GREAT STONE FACE
One afternoon,
when the sun was going down,
a mother and her little boy sat at the door of their cottage,
talking about the Great Stone Face.

They had but
to lift their eyes,
and there it was plainly
to be seen,
though miles away,

with the sunshine brightening all its features.

And what was the Great Stone Face?

Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains,
there was a valley so spacious that it con- tained many thousand inhabitants.

Some of these good people dwelt in log-huts,

with the black forest all around them,
on the steep and difficult hillsides.

Others had their homes in comfortable farm- houses,
and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or level surfaces of the valley.

Others,
again,
were congregated in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to sterling metal,
or,
which suited him still better,
in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to the cry.

All these comments,
and this vast enthusiasm,
served the more
to interest our friend;
nor did he think of questioning that now,
at length,
the mountain-visage had found its human counterpart.

It is true,
Ernest had imagined that this long-looked-
for personage would appear in the character of a man of peace,
uttering wisdom,
and doing good,
and making people happy.

But,
taking an habitual breadth of view,

with all his simplicity,
he contended that providence should choose its own method of blessing mankind,
and could conceive that this great end might be effected even by a warrior and a bloody sword,
should inscrutable wisdom see fit
to order matters SO.'The general!

the general!' was now the cry.

' Hush!

silence!

Old Blood-and-Thunder's going
to make a speech.'
Even so;
for,
the cloth being removed,
the general's health had been drunk,
amid shouts of applause,
and he now stood upon his feet
to thank the company.

Ernest saw him.

There he was,
over the shoulders of the crowd,
from the two glittering epaulets and embroidered collar upward,
beneath the arch of green boughs
with intertwined laurel,
and the banner drooping as if
to shade his brow!

And there,
too,
visible in the same glance,
through the vista of the forest,
appeared the Great Stone Face!

And was there,
indeed,
such a resemblance as the crowd had testified?

Alas,
Ernest could not recognize it!

He beheld a war- worn and weather-beaten countenance,
full of energy,
and expressive of an iron will;
but the gentle wisdom,
the deep,
broad,
tender sympathies,
were altogether wanting in Old Blood-and-Thunder's visage;
and even if the Great Stone Face had assumed his look of stern command,
the milder traits would still have tempered it.' This is not the man of prophecy,' sighed Ernest
to himself,
as he made his way out of the throng.

'And must the world wait longer yet?'
The mists had congregated about the distant mountainside,
and there were seen the grand and awful features of the Great Stone Face,
awful but benignant,
as if a mighty angel were sitting among the hills,
and enrobing himself in a cloud-vesture of gold and purple.

As he looked,
Ernest could hardly believe but that a smile beamed over the whole visage,

with a radiance still brightening,
although without motion of the lips.

It was probably the effect of the western sunshine,
melting through the thinly diffused vapors that had swept between him and the object that he gazed at.

But- as it always did- the aspect of his marvellous friend made Ernest as hopeful as if he had never hoped in vain.'Fear not,
Ernest,' said his heart,
even as if the Great Face were whispering him- 'fear not,
Ernest;
he will come.'
More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away.

Ernest still dwelt in his native valley,
and was now a man of middle age.

By imperceptible degrees,
he had become known among the people.

Now,
as heretofore,
he labored
for his bread,
and was the same simple-hearted man that he had always been.

But he had thought and felt so much,
he had given so many of the best hours of his life
to unworldly hopes
for some great good
to mankind,
that it seemed as though he had been talking
with the angels,
and had imbibed a portion of their wisdom unawares.

It was visible in the calm and well-considered beneficence of his daily life,
the quiet stream of which had made a wide green margin all along its course.

Not a day passed by,
that the world was not the better because this man,
humble as he was,
had lived.

He never stepped aside from his own path,
yet would always reach a blessing
to his neighbor.

Almost involuntarily,
too,
he had become a preacher.

The pure and high simplicity of his thought,
which,
as one of its manifestations,
took shape in the good deeds that dropped silently from his hand,
flowed also forth in speech.

He uttered truths that wrought upon and moulded the lives of those who heard him.

His auditors,
it may be,
never suspected that Ernest,
their own neighbor and familiar friend,
was more than an ordinary man;
least of all did Ernest himself suspect it;
but,
inevitably as the murmur of a rivulet,
came thoughts out of his mouth that no other human lips had spoken.When the people's minds had had a little time
to cool,
they were ready enough
to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and the benign visage on the mountain-side.

But now,
again,
there were reports and many paragraphs in the newspapers,
affirming that the likeness of the Great Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain eminent statesman.

He,
like Mr. Gathergold and old Blood-and-Thunder,
was a native of the valley,
but had left it in his early days,
and taken up the trades of law and politics.

Instead of the rich man's wealth and the warrior's sword,
he had but a tongue,
and it was mightier than both together.

So wonderfully eloquent was he,
that whatever he might choose
to say,
his auditors had no choice but
to believe him;
wrong looked like right,
and right like wrong;

for when it pleased him,
he could make a kind of illuminated fog
with his mere breath,
and obscure the natural daylight
with it.

His tongue,
indeed,
was a magic instrument:

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

It was the blast of war -- the song of peace;
and it seemed
to have a heart in it,
when there was no such matter.

In good truth,
he was a wondrous man;
and when his tongue had acquired him all other imaginable success- when it had been heard in halls of state,
and in the courts of princes and potentates--after it had made him known all over the world,
even as a voice crying from shore
to shore--it finally per- suaded his countrymen
to select him
for the Presidency.

Before this time- indeed,
as soon as he began
to grow celebrated--his admirers had found out the resemblance between him and the Great Stone Face;
and so much were they struck by it,
that throughout the country this distinguished gentleman was known by the name of Old Stony Phiz.

The phrase was considered as giving a highly favorable aspect
to his political prospects;
for,
as is likewise the case
with the Popedom,
nobody ever becomes President without taking a name other than his own.While his friends were doing their best
to make him President,
Old Stony Phiz,
as he was called,
set out on a visit
to the valley where he was born.

Of course,
he had no other object than
to shake hands
with his fellow-citizens,
and neither thought nor cared about any effect which his progress through the country might have upon the election.

Magnificent preparations were made
to receive the illustrious statesman;
a cavalcade of horsemen set forth
to meet him at the boundary line of the State,
and all the people left their business and gathered along the wayside
to see him pass.

Among these was Ernest.

Though more than once disappointed,
as we have seen,
he had such a hopeful and confiding nature,
that he was always ready
to believe in whatever seemed beautiful and good.He kept his heart continually open,
and thus was sure
to catch the blessing from on high when it should come.

So now again,
as buoyantly as ever,
he went forth
to behold the likeness of the Great Stone Face.The cavalcade came prancing along the road,

with a great clattering of hoofs and a mighty cloud of dust,
which rose up so dense and high that the visage of the mountainside was completely hidden from Ernest's eyes.

All the great men of the neighborhood were there on horseback;
militia officers,
in uniform;
the member of Congress;
the sheriff of the county;
the editors of newspapers;
and many a farmer,
too,
had mounted his patient steed,

with his Sunday coat upon his back.

It really was a very brilliant spectacle,
especially as there were numerous banners flaunting over the cavalcade,
on some of which were gorgeous portraits of the illustrious statesman and the Great Stone Face,
smiling familiarly at one another,
like two brothers.

If the pictures were
to be trusted,
the mutual resemblance,
it must be confessed,
was marvellous.

We must not forget
to mention that there was a band of music,
which made the echoes of the mountains ring and reverberate
with the loud triumph of its strains;
so that airy and soul-thrilling melodies broke out among all the heights and hollows,
as if every nook of his native valley had found a voice,

to welcome the distinguished guest.

But the grandest effect was when the far-off mountain precipice flung back the music;

for then the Great Stone Face itself seemed
to be swelling the triumphant chorus,
in acknowledgment,
that,
at length,
the man of prophecy was come.All this while the people were throwing up their hats and shouting,

with enthusiasm so contagious that the heart of Ernest kindled up,
and he likewise threw up his hat,
and shouted,
as loudly as the loudest,
'Huzza
for the great man!

Huzza
for Old Stony Phiz!' But as yet he had not seen him.'Here he is,
now!' cried those who stood near Ernest.

'There!

There!

Look at Old Stony Phiz and then at the Old Man of the Mountain,
and see if they are not as like as two twin brothers!'
In the midst of all this gallant array came an open barouche,
drawn by four white horses;
and in the barouche,

with his massive head uncovered,
sat the illustrious statesman,
Old Stony Phiz himself.'Confess it,' said one of Ernest's neighbors
to him,
'the Great Stone Face has met its match at last!'
Now,
it must be owned that,
at his first glimpse of the countenance which was bowing and smiling from the barouche,
Ernest did fancy that there was a resemblance between it and the old familiar face upon the mountainside.

The brow,

with its massive depth and loftiness,
and all the other features,
indeed,
were boldly and strongly hewn,
as if in emulation of a more than heroic,
of a Titanic model.

But the sublimity and stateliness,
the grand expression of a divine sympathy,
that illuminated the mountain visage and etherealized its ponderous granite substance in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to the clear atmosphere of his poetry.

Neither was the Great Stone Face forgotten,

for the poet had celebrated it in an ode,
which was grand enough
to have been uttered by its own majestic lips.

This man of genius,
we may say,
had come down from heaven
with wonderful endowments.

If he sang of a mountain,
the eyes of all mankind beheld a mightier grandeur reposing on its breast,
or soaring
to its summit,
than had before been seen there.

If his theme were a lovely lake,
a celestial smile had now been thrown over it,

to gleam forever on its surface.

If it were the vast old sea,
even the deep immensity of its dread bosom seemed
to swell the higher,
as if moved by the emotions of the song.

Thus the world assumed another and a better aspect from the hour that the poet blessed it
with his happy eyes.

The Creator had bestowed him,
as the last best touch
to his own handiwork.

Creation was not finished till the poet came
to interpret,
and so complete it.The effect was no less high and beautiful,
when his human brethren were the subject of his verse.

The man or woman,
sordid
with the common dust of life,
who crossed his daily path,
and the little child who played in it,
were glorified if they beheld him in his mood of poetic faith.

He showed the golden links of the great chain that intertwined them
with an angelic kindred;
he brought out the hidden traits of a celestial birth that made them worthy of such kin.

Some,
indeed,
there were,
who thought
to show the soundness of their judg- ment by affirming that all the beauty and dignity of the natural world existed only in the poet's fancy.

Let such men speak
for themselves,
who undoubtedly appear
to have been spawned forth by Nature
with a contemptuous bitterness;
she plastered them up out of her refuse stuff,
after all the swine were made.

As respects all things else,
the peet's ideal was the truest truth.The songs of this poet found their way
to Ernest.

He read them after his customary toil,
seated on the bench before his cottage-door,
where
for such a length of time he had filled his repose
with thought,
by gazing at the Great Stone Face.

And now as he read stanzas that caused the soul
to thrill within him,
he lifted his eyes
to the vast countenance beaming on him so benignantly.'O majestic friend,' he murmured,
addressing the Great Stone Face,
'is not this man worthy
to resemble thee?'
The face seemed
to smile,
but answered not a word.Now it happened that the poet,
though he dwelt so far away,
had not only heard of Ernest,
but had meditated much upon his character,
until he deemed nothing so desirable as
to meet this man,
whose untaught wisdom walked hand in hand
with the noble simplicity of his life.One summer morning,
therefore,
he took passage by the railroad,
and,
in the decline of the afternoon,
alighted from the cars at no great distance from Ernest's cottage.

The great hotel,
which had formerly been the palace of Mr. Gathergold,
was close at hand,
but the poet,

with his carpetbag on his arm,
inquired at once where Ernest dwelt,
and was resolved
to be accepted as his guest.Approaching the door,
he there found the good old man,
holding a volume in his hand,
which alternately he read,
and then,

with a finger between the leaves,
looked lovingly at the Great Stone Face.'Good evening,' said the poet.

'Can you give a traveller a night's lodging?'
'Willingly,' answered Ernest;
and then he added,
smiling,
'Methinks I never saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger.'
The poet sat down on"the bench beside him,
and he and Ernest talked together.

Often had the poet held intercourse
with the wittiest and the wisest,
but never before
with a man like Ernest,
whose thoughts and feelings gushed up
with such a natural feeling,
and who made great truths so familiar by his simple utterance of them.

Angels,
as had been so often said,
seemed
to have wrought
with him at his labor in the fields;
angels seemed
to have sat
with him by the fireside;
and,
dwelling
with angels as friend
with friends,
he had imbibed the sublimity of their ideas,
and imbued it
with the sweet and lowly charm of household words.

So thought the poet.

And Ernest,
on the other hand,
was moved and agitated by the living images which the poet flung out of his mind,
and which peopled all the air about the cottage-door
with shapes of beauty,
both gay and pensive.

The sympathies of these two men instructed them
with a profounder sense than either could have attained alone.

Their minds accorded in
to 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,
in
to a high pavilion of their thoughts,
so remote,
and hither
to 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 in
to 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.

In
to 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 in
to them.

Pearls,
pure and rich,
had been dissolved in
to 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 in
to the valley.


for a moment it saddened them,
though there was nothing unusual in the tones.

But the family were glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some traveller,
whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which heralded his approach,
and wailed as he was entering,
and went moaning away from the door.Though they dwelt {n such a solitude,
these people held daily converse
with the world.

The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery,
through which the life-blood of internal commerce is continually throbbing between Maine,
on one side,
and the Green Mountains and the shores of the St.

Lawrence,
on the other.

The stage-coach always drew up before the door of the cottage.

The wayfarer,

with no companion but his staff,
paused here
to exchange a word,
that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft of the mountain,
or reach the first house in the valley.

And here the teamster,
on his way
to Portland market,
would put up
for the night;
and,
if a bachelor,
might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime,
and steal a kiss from the mountain maid at parting.

It was one of those primitive taverns where the traveller pays only
for food and lodging,
but meets
with a homely kindness beyond all price.

When the footsteps were heard,
therefore,
between the outer door and the inner one,
the whole family rose up,
grandmother,
children,
and all,
as if about
to welcome some one who belonged
to them,
and whose fate was linked
with theirs.The door was opened by a young man.

His face at first wore the melancholy expression,
almost despondency,
of one who travels a wild and bleak road,
at nightfall and alone,
but soon brightened up when he saw the kindly warmth of his reception.

He felt his heart spring forward
to meet them all,
from the old woman,
who wiped a chair
with her apron,

to the little child that held out its arms
to him.

One glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent familiarity
with the eldest daughter.

'Ah,
this fire is the right thing!' cried he;
'especially when there is such a pleasant circle round it.

I am quite benumbed;

for the Notch is just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows;
it has blown a terrible blast in my face all the way from Bartlett.'
'Then you are going towards Vermont?' said the master of the house,
as he helped
to take a light knapsack off the young man's shoulders.'Yes;

to Burlington,
and far enough beyond,' replied he.

'I meant
to have been at Ethan Crawford's tonight;
but a pedestrian lingers along such a road as this.

It is no matter;
for,
when I saw this good fire,
and all your cheerful faces,
I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose
for me,
and were waiting my arrival.

So I shall sit down among you,
and make myself at home.'
The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair
to the fire when something like a heavy footstep was heard without,
rushing down the steep side of the mountain,
as
with long and rapid strides,
and taking such a leap in passing the cottage as
to strike the opposite precipice.

The family held their breath,
because they knew the sound,
and their guest held his by instinct.'The old mountain has thrown a stone at us,

for fear we should forget him,' said the landlord,
recovering himself.

'He sometimes nods his head and threatens
to come down;
but we are old neighbors,
and agree together pretty well upon the whole.

Besides we have a sure place of refuge hard by if he should be coming in good earnest.'
Let us now suppose the stranger
to have finished his supper of bear's meat;
and,
by his natural felicity of manner,

to have placed himself on a footing of kindness
with the whole family,
so that they talked as freely together as if he belonged
to their mountain brood.

He was of a proud,
yet gentle spirit -- haughty and reserved among the rich and great;
but ever ready
to stoop his head
to the lowly cottage door,
and be like a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside.

In the household of the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling,
the pervading intelligence of New England,
and a poetry of native growth,
which they had gathered when they little thought of it from the mountain peaks and chasms,
and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode.

He had travelled far and alone;
his whole life,
indeed,
had been a solitary path;
for,

with the lofty caution of his nature,
he had kept himself apart from those who might otherwise have been his companions.

The family,
too,
though so kind and hospitable,
had that consciousness of unity among themselves,
and separation from the world at large,
which,
in every domestic circle,
should still keep a holy place where no stranger may intrude.

But this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth
to pour out his heart before the simple mountaineers,
and constrained them
to answer him
with the same free confidence.

And thus it should have been.

Is not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth?
The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted ambition.

He could have borne
to live an undistinguished life,
but not
to be forgotten in the grave.

Yearning desire had been transformed
to hope;
and hope,
long cherished,
had become like certainty,
that,
obscurely as he journeyed now,
a glory was
to beam on all his pathway- though not,
perhaps,
while he was treading it.

But when posterity should gaze back in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to words?'
'They would not be a girl's feelings any longer if they could be put in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 hither
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to every chasm,

for the sole purpose of demonstrating
to the satisfaction of any man one whit less an ass than thyself that the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug!'
Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the adventurers
to the Crystal Hills;
but none so vain,
so foolish,
and so impious too,
as that of the scoffer
with the prodigious spectacles.

He was one of those wretched and evil men whose yearnings are downward
to the darkness,
instead of heavenward,
and who,
could they but distinguish the lights which God hath kindled
for us,
would count the midnight gloom their chiefest glory.

As the Cynic spoke,
several of the party were startled by a gleam of red splendor,
that showed the huge shapes of the surrounding mountains and the rock- bestrewn bed of the turbulent river
with an illumination unlike that of their fire on the trunks and black boughs of the forest trees.

They listened
for the roll of thunder,
but heard nothing,
and were glad that the tempest came not near them.

The stars,
those dial-points of heaven,
now warned the adventurers
to close their eyes on the blazing logs,
and open them,
in dreams,

to the glow of the Great Carbuncle.The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest corner of the wigwam,
and were separated from the rest of the party by a curtain of curiously-woven twigs,
such as might have hung,
in deep festoons,
around the bridal-bower of Eve.

The modest little wife had wrought this piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking.

She and her husband fell asleep
with hands tenderly clasped,
and awoke from visions of unearthly radiance
to meet the more blessed light of one another's eyes.

They awoke at the same instant,
and
with one happy smile beaming over their two faces,
which grew brighter
with their consciousness of the reality of life and love.

But no sooner did she recollect where they were,
than the bride peeped through the interstices of the leafy curtain,
and saw that the outer room of the hut was deserted.'Up,
dear Matthew!' cried she,
in haste.

'The strange folk are all gone!

Up,
this very minute,
or we shall loose the Great Carbuncle!'
In truth,
so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty prize which had lured them thither,
that they had slept peacefully all night,
and till the summits of the hills were glittering
with sunshine;
while the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish wakefulness,
or dreamed of climbing precipices,
and set off
to realize their dreams
with the earliest peep of dawn.

But Matthew and Hannah,
after their calm rest,
were as light as two young deer,
and merely stopped
to say their prayers and wash themselves in a cold pool of the Amonoosuck,
and then
to taste a morsel of food,
ere they turned their faces
to the mountainside.

It was a sweet emblem of conjugal affection,
as they toiled up the difficult ascent,
gathering strength from the mutual aid which they afforded.

After several little accidents,
such as a torn robe,
a lost shoe,
and the entanglement of Hannah's hair in a bough,
they reached the upper verge of the forest,
and were now
to pursue a more adventurous course.

The innumerable trunks and heavy foliage of the trees had hither
to 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,
in
to a mass,
presenting the appearance of a pavement over which the wanderers might have trodden,
but where they would vainly have sought an avenue
to the blessed earth which they had lost.

And the lovers yearned
to behold that green earth again,
more intensely,
alas!

than,
beneath a clouded sky,
they had ever desired a glimpse of heaven.

They even felt it a relief
to their desolation when the mists,
creeping gradually up the mountain,
concealed its lonely peak,
and thus annihilated,
at least
for them,
the whole region of visible space.

But they drew closely together,

with a fond and melancholy gaze,
dreading lest the universal cloud should snatch them from each other's sight.Still,
perhaps,
they would have been resolute
to climb as far and as high,
between earth and heaven,
as they could find foothold,
if Hannah's strength had not begun
to fail,
and
with that,
her courage also.

Her breath grew short.

She refused
to burden her husband
with her weight,
but often tottered against his side,
and recovered herself each time by a feebler effort.

At last,
she sank down on one of the rocky steps of the acclivity.'We are lost,
dear Matthew,' said she,
mournfully.

'We shall never find our way
to the earth again.

And oh how happy we might have been in our cottage!'
'Dear heart!

w we will yet be happy there,' answered Matthew.

'Look!

In this direction,
the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist.

By its aid,
I can direct our course
to the passage of the Notch.

Let us go back,
love,
and dream no more of the Great Carbuncle!'
'The sun cannot be yonder[ said Hannah,

with despondence.

'By this time it must be noon.

If there could ever be any sunshine here,
it would come from above our heads.'
'But look!' repeated Matthew,
in a somewhat altered tone.

'It is brightening every moment.

If not sunshine,
what can it be?'
Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was breaking through the mist,
and changing its dim hue
to a dusky red,
which continually grew more vivid,
as if brilliant particles were interfused
with the gloom.

Now,
also,
the cloud began
to roll away from the mountain,
while,
as it heavily withdrew,
one object after another started out of its impenetrable obscurity in
to 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,
in
to 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 in
to 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 aisleś 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 in
to 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 in
to 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 in
to 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.'