THE GREAT STONE FACE

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

NOTE. This story is found in Hawthorne's "The Snow Image, and Other Twice Told Tales." In the Franconia Mountains in New Hampshire there is a "Great Stone Face," called the Old Man of the Mountain. It was not carved by the hand of man, but the face is very clear and distinct. No doubt it suggested this story.

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?

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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 15 and difficult hillsides. Others had their homes in comfortable farmhouses, 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 20 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 5 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 majestic playfulness, formed on the perpen10 dicular 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 15 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 20 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 rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon another. Retracing his steps, however, the 25 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 5 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 10 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 15 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, "if I were to see a man with such 20 a face, I should love him dearly."

"If an old prophecy should come to pass," answered his mother, "we may see a man, sometime or other, with exactly such a face as that."

"What prophecy do you mean, dear mother?" eagerly 25 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 5 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 10 noblest personage of his time, and whose countenance in manhood should bear an exact resemblance to the Great Stone Face.

And Ernest never forgot the story that his mother told him. It was always in his mind whenever he looked 15 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 20 child, he grew up to be a mild, quiet, unobtrusive boy, 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 25