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 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.