THE GREAT STONE FACE
One afternoon, when the sun was
going down, a mother and her little boy sat at the door of their
cottage, talking about the Great Stone Face. They had but to lift
their eyes, and there it was plainly to be seen, though miles away,
with the sunshine brightening all its features. And what was the
Great Stone Face? Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains,
there was a valley so spacious that it contained many thousand
inhabitants. Some of these good people dwelt in log-huts, with the
black forest all around them, on the steep and difficult hillsides.
Others had their homes in comfortable farm-houses, and cultivated
the rich soil on the gentle slopes or level surfaces of the valley.
Others, again, were congregated into populous villages, where some
wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down from its birthplace in the
upper mountain region, had been caught and tamed by human cunning,
and compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories. The
inhabitants of this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many
modes of life. But all of them, grown people and children, had a
kind of familiarity with the Great Stone Face, although some
possessed the gift of distinguishing this grand natural phenomenon
more perfectly than many of their neighbors.
The Great Stone Face, then, was a
work of Nature in her mood of majestie playfulness, formed on the
perpendicular side of a mountain by some immense rocks, which had
been thrown together in such a position as, when viewed at a proper
distance, precisely to resemble the features of the human
countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan, had
sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad
arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its
long bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken,
would have rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley
to the other. True it is, that if the spectator approached too
near, he lost the outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern
only a heap of ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin
one upon another. Retracing his steps, however, the wondrous
features would again be seen; and the farther he withdrew from
them, the more like a human face, with all its original divinity
intact, did they appear; until, as it grew dim in the distance,
with the clouds and glorified vapor of the mountains clustering
about it, the Great Stone Face seemed positively to be alive.
It was a happy lot for children
to grow up to manhood or womanhood with the Great Stone Face before
their eyes, for all the features were noble, and the expression was
at once grand and sweet, as if it were the glow of a vast, warm
heart, that embraced all mankind in its affections, and had room
for more. It was an education only to look at it. According to the
belief of many people, the valley owed much of its fertility to
this benign aspect that was continually beaming over it,
illuminating the clouds, and infusing its tenderness into the
sunshine.
As we began with saying, a mother
and her little boy sat at their cottage-door, gazing at the Great
Stone Face, and talking about it. The child’s name was
Ernest.
‘Mother,’ said he, while the
Titanic visage miled on him, ‘I wish that it could speak, for it
looks so very kindly that its voice must needs be pleasant. If I
were to See a man with such a face, I should love him dearly.’ ‘If
an old prophecy should come to pass,’ answered
his mother, ‘we may see a man,
some time for other, with exactly such a face as that.’ ‘What
prophecy do you mean, dear mother?’ eagerly inquired Ernest. ‘Pray
tell me all about it!’