Short Stories Old and New - Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
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 battle-field under the
nickname of Old Blood-and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now
infirm with age and wounds, and weary of the turmoil of a military life,
and of the roll of the drum and the clangor of the trumpet, that had so
long been ringing in his ears, had lately signified a purpose of
returning to his native valley, hoping to find repose where he
remembered to have left it. The inhabitants, his old neighbors and their
grown-up children, were resolved to welcome the renowned warrior with a
salute of cannon and a public dinner; and all the more enthusiastically,
it being affirmed that now, at last, the likeness of the Great Stone
Face had actually appeared. An aid-de-camp of Old Blood-and-Thunder,
travelling through the valley, was said to have been struck with the
resemblance. Moreover the schoolmates and early acquaintances of the
general were ready to testify, on oath, that, to the best of their
recollection, the aforesaid general had been exceedingly like the
majestic image, even when a boy, only that the idea had never occurred
to them at that period. Great, therefore, was the excitement throughout
the valley; and many people, who had never once thought of glancing at
the Great Stone Face for years before, now spent their time in gazing at
it for the sake of knowing exactly how General Blood-and-Thunder looked.
On the day of the great festival, Ernest, with all the other people of
the valley, left their work, and proceeded to the spot where the sylvan
banquet was prepared. As he approached, the loud voice of the Rev. Dr.
Battleblast was heard, beseeching a blessing on the good things set
before them, and on the distinguished friend of peace in whose honor
they were assembled. The tables were arranged in a cleared space of the
woods, shut in by the surrounding trees, except where a vista opened
eastward, and afforded a distant view of the Great Stone Face.
Over the general's chair, which was a relic from the home of Washington,
there was an arch of verdant boughs, with the laurel profusely
intermixed, and surmounted by his country's banner, beneath which he had
won his victories. Our friend Ernest raised himself on his tiptoes, in
hopes to get a glimpse of the celebrated guest; but there was a mighty
crowd about the tables anxious to hear the toasts and speeches, and to
catch any word that might fall from the general in reply; and a
volunteer company, doing duty as a guard, pricked ruthlessly with their
bayonets at any particularly quiet person among the throng. So Ernest,
being of an unobtrusive character, was thrust quite into the background,
where he could see no more of Old Blood-and-Thunder's physiognomy than
if it had been still blazing on the battle-field. 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 mountain-side.
"Tis the same face, to a hair!" cried one man, cutting a caper for joy.
"Wonderfully like, that's a fact!" responded another.
"Like! why, I call it Old Blood-and-Thunder himself, in a monstrous
looking-glass!" cried a third. "And why not? He's the greatest man of
this or any other age, beyond a doubt."
And then all three of the speakers gave a great shout, which
communicated electricity to the crowd, and called forth a roar from a
thousand voices, that went reverberating for miles among the mountains,
until you might have supposed that the Great Stone Face had poured its
thunder-breath into the cry. All these comments, and this vast
enthusiasm served the more to interest our friend; nor did he think of
questioning that now, at length, the mountain-visage had found its human
counterpart. It is true, Ernest had imagined that this long-looked-for
personage would appear in the character of a man of peace, uttering
wisdom, and doing good, and making people happy. But, taking an habitual
breadth of view, with all his simplicity, he contended that Providence
should choose its own method of blessing mankind, and could conceive
that this great end might be effected even by a warrior and a bloody
sword, should inscrutable wisdom see fit to order matters so.
"The general! the general!" was now the cry. "Hush! silence! Old
Blood-and-Thunder's going to make a speech."
Even so; for, the cloth being removed, the general's health had been
drunk amid shouts of applause, and he now stood upon his feet to thank
the company. Ernest saw him. There he was, over the shoulders of the
crowd, from the two glittering epaulets and embroidered collar upward,
beneath the arch of green boughs with interwined 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 mountain-side, and there
were seen the grand and awful features of the Great Stone Face, awful
but benignant, as if a mighty angel were sitting among the hills, and
enrobing himself in a cloud-vesture of gold and purple. As he looked,
Ernest could hardly believe but that a smile beamed over the whole
visage, with a radiance still brightening, although without motion of
the lips. It was probably the effect of the western sunshine, melting
through the thinly diffused vapors that had swept between him and the
object that he gazed at. But--as it always did--the aspect of his
marvellous friend made Ernest as hopeful as if he had never hoped in
vain.
"Fear not, Ernest," said his heart, even as if the Great Face were
whispering him,--"fear not, Ernest; he will come."
More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. Ernest still dwelt in his
native valley, and was now a man of middle age. By imperceptible
degrees, he had become known among the people. Now, as heretofore, he
labored for his bread, and was the same simple-hearted man that he had
always been. But he had thought and felt so much, he had given so many
of the best hours of his life to unworldly hopes for some great good to
mankind, that it seemed as though he had been talking with the angels,
and had imbibed a portion of their wisdom unawares. It was visible in
the calm and well-considered beneficence of his daily life, the quiet
stream of which had made a wide green margin all along its course. Not a
day passed by, that the world was not the better because this man,
humble as he was, had lived. He never stepped aside from his own path,
yet would always reach a blessing to his neighbor. Almost involuntarily,
too, he had become a preacher. The pure and high simplicity of his
thought, which, as one of its manifestations, took shape in the good
deeds that dropped silently from his hand, flowed also forth in speech.
He uttered truths that wrought upon and moulded the lives of those who
heard him. His auditors, it may be, never suspected that Ernest, their
own neighbor and familiar friend, was more than an ordinary man; least
of all did Ernest himself suspect it; but, inevitably as the murmur of a
rivulet, came thoughts out of his mouth that no other human lips had
spoken.
When the people's minds had had a little time to cool, they were ready
enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between
General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and the benign visage
on the mountain-side. But now, again, there were reports and many
paragraphs in the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the Great
Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain eminent
statesman. He, like Mr. Gathergold and Old Blood-and-Thunder, was a
native of the valley, but had left it in his early days, and taken up
the trades of law and politics. Instead of the rich man's wealth and the
warrior's sword, he had but a tongue, and it was mightier than both
together. So wonderfully eloquent was he, that whatever he might choose
to say, his auditors had no choice but to believe him; wrong looked like
right, and right like wrong; for when it pleased him, he could make a
kind of illuminated fog with his mere breath, and obscure the natural
daylight with it. His tongue, indeed, was a magic instrument: sometimes
it rumbled like the thunder; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest
music. It was the blast of war,--the song of peace; and it seemed to
have a heart in it, when there was no such matter. In good truth, he was
a wondrous man; and when his tongue had acquired him all other
imaginable success,--when it had been heard in halls of state, and in
the courts of princes and potentates,--after it had made him known all
over the world, even as a voice crying from shore to shore,--it finally
persuaded his countrymen to select him for the Presidency. Before this
time,--indeed, as soon as he began to grow celebrated,--his admirers had
found out the resemblance between him and the Great Stone Face; and so
much were they struck by it, that throughout the country this
distinguished gentleman was known by the name of Old Stony Phiz. The
phrase was considered as giving a highly favorable aspect to his
political prospects; for, as is likewise the case with the Popedom,
nobody ever becomes President without taking a name other than his own.
While his friends were doing their best to make him President, Old Stony
Phiz, as he was called, set out on a visit to the valley where he was
born. Of course, he had no other object than to shake hands with his
fellow-citizens, and neither thought nor cared about any effect which
his progress through the country might have upon the election.
Magnificent preparations were made to receive the illustrious statesman;
a cavalcade of horsemen set forth to meet him at the boundary line of
the State, and all the people left their business and gathered along the
wayside to see him pass. Among these was Ernest. Though more than once
disappointed, as we have seen, he had such a hopeful and confiding
nature, that he was always ready to believe in whatever seemed beautiful
and good. He kept his heart continually open, and thus was sure to catch
the blessing from on high, when it should come. So now again, as
buoyantly as ever, he went forth to behold the likeness of the Great
Stone Face.
The cavalcade came prancing along the road, with a great clattering of
hoofs and a mighty cloud of dust, which rose up so dense and high that
the visage of the mountain-side was completely hidden from Ernest's
eyes. All the great men of the neighborhood were there on horseback:
militia officers, in uniform; the member of Congress; the sheriff of the
county; the editors of newspapers; and many a farmer, too, had mounted
his patient steed, with his Sunday coat upon his back. It really was a
very brilliant spectacle, especially as there were numerous banners
flaunting over the cavalcade, on some of which were gorgeous portraits
of the illustrious statesman and the Great Stone Face, smiling
familiarly at one another, like two brothers. If the pictures were to be
trusted, the 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
mountain-side. The brow, with its massive depths and loftiness, and all
the other features, indeed, were boldly and strongly hewn, as if in
emulation of a more than heroic, of a Titanic model. But the sublimity
and stateliness, the grand expression of a divine sympathy, that
illuminated the mountain visage, and etherealized its ponderous granite
substance into spirit, might here be sought in vain. Something had been
originally left out, or had departed. And therefore the marvellously
gifted statesman had always a weary gloom in the deep caverns of his
eyes, as of a child that has outgrown its playthings, or a man of mighty
faculties and little aims, whose life, with all its high performances,
was vague and empty, because no high purpose had endowed it with
reality.
Still, Ernest's neighbor was thrusting his elbow into his side, and
pressing him for an answer.
"Confess! confess! Is not he the very picture of your Old Man of the
Mountain?"
"No!" said Ernest, bluntly, "I see little or no likeness."
"Then so much the worse for the Great Stone Face!" answered his
neighbor; and again he set up a shout for Old Stony Phiz.
But Ernest turned away, melancholy, and almost despondent; for this was
the saddest of his disappointments, to behold a man who might have
fulfilled the prophecy, and had not willed to do so. Meantime, the
cavalcade, the banners, the music, and the barouches swept past him,
with the vociferous crowd in the rear, leaving the dust to settle down,
and the Great Stone Face to be revealed again, with the grandeur that it
had worn for untold centuries.
"Lo, here I am, Ernest!" the benign lips seemed to say. "I have waited
longer than thou, and am not yet weary. Fear not; the man will come."
The years hurried onward, treading in their haste on one another's
heels. And now they began to bring white hairs, and scatter them over
the head of Ernest; they made reverend wrinkles across his forehead, and
furrows in his cheeks. He was an aged man. But not in vain had he grown
old; more than the white hairs on his head were the sage thoughts in his
mind; his wrinkles and furrows were inscriptions that Time had graved,
and in which he had written legends of wisdom that had been tested by
the tenor of a life. And Ernest had ceased to be obscure. Unsought for,
undesired, had come the fame which so many seek, and made him known in
the great world, beyond the limits of the valley in which he had dwelt
so quietly. College professors, and even the active men of cities, came
from far to see and converse with Ernest; for the report had gone abroad
that this simple husbandman had ideas unlike those of other men, not
gained from books, but of a higher tone,--a tranquil and familiar
majesty, as if he had been talking with the angels as his daily friends.
Whether it were sage, statesman, or philanthropist, Ernest received
these visitors with the gentle sincerity that had characterized him from
boyhood, and spoke freely with them of whatever came uppermost, or lay
deepest in his heart or their own. While they talked together, his face
would kindle, unawares, and shine upon them, as with a mild evening
light. Pensive with the fulness of such discourse, his guests took leave
and went their way; and passing up the valley, paused to look at the
Great Stone Face, imagining that they had seen its likeness in a human
countenance, but could not remember where.
While Ernest had been growing up and growing old, a bountiful Providence
had granted a new poet to this earth. He, likewise, was a native of the
valley, but had spent the greater part of his life at a distance from
that romantic region, pouring out his sweet music amid the bustle and
din of cities. Often, however, did the mountains which had been familiar
to him in his childhood lift their snowy peaks into the clear atmosphere
of his poetry. Neither was the Great Stone Face forgotten, for the poet
had celebrated it in an ode, which was grand enough to have been uttered
by its own majestic lips. This man of genius, we may say, had come down
from heaven with wonderful endowments. If he sang of a mountain, the
eyes of all mankind beheld a mightier grandeur reposing on its breast,
or soaring to its summit, than had before been seen there. If his theme
were a lovely lake, a celestial smile had now been thrown over it, to
gleam forever on its surface. If it were the vast old sea, even the deep
immensity of its dread bosom seemed to swell the higher, as if moved by
the emotions of the song. Thus the world assumed another and a better
aspect from the hour that the poet blessed it with his happy eyes. The
Creator had bestowed him, as the last best touch to his own handiwork.
Creation was not finished till the poet came to interpret, and so
complete it.
The effect was no less high and beautiful, when his human brethren were
the subject of his verse. The man or woman, sordid with the common dust
of life, who crossed his daily path, and the little child who played in
it, were glorified if he beheld them in his mood of poetic faith. He
showed the golden links of the great chain that intertwined them with an
angelic kindred; he brought out the hidden traits of a celestial birth
that made them worthy of such kin. Some, indeed, there were, who thought
to show the soundness of their judgment by affirming that all the beauty
and dignity of the natural world existed only in the poet's fancy. Let
such men speak for themselves, who undoubtedly appear to have been
spawned forth by Nature with a contemptuous bitterness; she having
plastered them up out of her refuse stuff, after all the swine were
made. As respects all things else, the poet's ideal was the truest
truth.
The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. He read them after his
customary toil, seated on the bench before his cottage-door, where for
such a length of time he had filled his repose with thought, by gazing
at the Great Stone Face. And now as he read stanzas that caused the soul
to thrill within him, he lifted his eyes to the vast countenance beaming
on him so benignantly.
"O majestic friend," he murmured, addressing the Great Stone Face, "is
not this man worthy to resemble thee?"
The Face seemed to smile, but answered not a word.
Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt so far away, had not only
heard of Ernest, but had meditated much upon his character, until he
deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, whose untaught wisdom
walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of his life. One summer
morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and, in the decline
of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great distance from
Ernest's cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly been the palace of
Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, with his carpet-bag 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 freedom, and who made great
truths so familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, as had been
so often said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labor in the
fields; angels seemed to have sat with him by the fireside; and,
dwelling with angels as friend with friends, he had imbibed the
sublimity of their ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and lowly charm
of household words. So thought the poet. And Ernest, on the other hand,
was moved and agitated by the living images which the poet flung out of
his mind, and which peopled all the air about the cottage-door with
shapes of beauty, both gay and pensive. The sympathies of these two men
instructed them with a profounder sense than either could have attained
alone. Their minds accorded into one strain, and made delightful music
which neither of them could have claimed as all his own, nor
distinguished his own share from the other's. They led one another, as
it were, into a high pavilion of their thoughts, so remote, and hitherto
so dim, that they had never entered it before, and so beautiful that
they desired to be there always.
As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that the Great Stone Face
was bending forward to listen too. He gazed earnestly into the poet's
glowing eyes.
"Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?" he said.
The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been reading.
"You have read these poems," said he. "You know me, then,--for I wrote
them."
Again, and still more earnestly than before, Ernest examined the poet's
features; then turned towards the Great Stone Face; then back, with an
uncertain aspect, to his guest. But his countenance fell; he shook his
head, and sighed.
"Wherefore are you sad?" inquired the poet.
"Because," replied Ernest, "all through life I have awaited the
fulfilment of a prophecy; and, when I read these poems, I hoped that it
might be fulfilled in you."
"You hoped," answered the poet, faintly smiling, "to find in me the
likeness of the Great Stone Face. And you are disappointed, as formerly
with Mr. Gathergold, and Old Blood-and-Thunder, and Old Stony Phiz. Yes,
Ernest, it is my doom. You must add my name to the illustrious three,
and record another failure of your hopes. For--in shame and sadness do I
speak it, Ernest--I am not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and
majestic image."
"And why?" asked Ernest. He pointed to the volume. "Are not those
thoughts divine?"
"They have a strain of the Divinity," replied the poet. "You can hear in
them the far-off echo of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, has
not corresponded with my thought. I have had grand dreams, but they have
been only dreams, because I have lived--and that, too, by my own
choice--among poor and mean realities. Sometimes even--shall I dare to
say it?--I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the goodness,
which my own works are said to have made more evident in nature and in
human life. Why, then, pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst thou
hope to find me, in yonder image of the divine?"
The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears. So, likewise,
were those of Ernest.
At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest was
to discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the open
air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went
along, proceeded to the spot. It was a small nook among the hills, with
a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the
pleasant foliage of many creeping plants, that made a tapestry for the
naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a
small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure,
there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with
freedom for such gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought and
genuine emotion. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a
look of familiar kindness around upon his audience. They stood, or sat,
or reclined upon the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing
sunshine falling obliquely over them, and mingling its subdued
cheerfulness with the solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, beneath and
amid the boughs of which the golden rays were constrained to pass. In
another direction was seen the Great Stone Face, with the same cheer,
combined with the same solemnity, in its benignant aspect.