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 smiled 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 or other, with exactly such a face
as that."

"What prophecy do you mean, dear mother?" eagerly inquired
Ernest. "Pray tell me 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,