Elson Grammar School Literature, book 4Elson, William H. (William Harris)
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Elson Grammar School Literature, book 4
Elson, William H. (William Harris)
Readers
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 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 into spirit, might here be
sought in vain. Something had been originally left out, or had departed.
And therefore the marvelously 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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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