472 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



for four hundred feet above your head. Coming from the soft marble country of 

 Vermont, and from the pale granite of Massachusetts, there seems something weird 

 and forbidding in this utter blackness. On your left the giant wall now appears 

 nearer, now retreats again; on your right foams the merry stream, breaking into 

 graceful cascades, and across it the great mountain, Whiteface, seamed with slides. 

 Now the woods upon your left are displaced by the iron wall almost touching the 

 roadside ; against its steep abruptness scarcely a shrub can cling, scarcely a fern 

 flutter; it takes your breath away; but five miles of perilous driving conduct you 

 through it; and beyond this stern passway, this cave of iron, lie the lovely lakes and 

 mountains of the Adirondacks, and the homestead of John Brown. 



"The Notch seems beyond the world, North Elba and its half dozen houses beyond 

 the Notch, and there is a wilder little mountain road which rises beyond North Elba. 

 But the house we seek is not even on that road, but behind it and beyond it; you ride a 

 mile or two, then take down a pair of bars ; beyond the bars, faith takes you across a 

 half-cleared field, through the most difficult of wood-paths, and after half a mile of 

 forest you come out upon a clearing. There is a little frame house, unpainted, set in 

 a girdle of black stumps, and with all heaven about it for a wider girdle, on a high 

 hillside; forests on north and west; the glorious line of the Adirondacks on the east; 

 and on the south one slender road leading off to Westport, a road so straight that you 

 could sight a United States Marshal for five miles. 



" There stands the little house, with no ornament nor relief about it — it needs none 

 with the setting of mountain horizon. Yes, there is one decoration which at once 

 takes the eye, and which, stern and misplaced as it would seem elsewhere, seems 

 appropriate here. It is a strange thing to see any thing so old, where all the works of 

 man are new ! but it is an old, mossy, time-worn tombstone — not marking any grave, 

 not set in the ground, but resting against the house as if its time were either past or 

 not yet come. Both are true — it has a past duty and a future one. It bears the name 

 of Captain John Brown, who died during the Revolution, eighty-three years ago; it was 

 his tombstone brought hither by his grandson bearing the same name and title; the 

 latter caused to be inscribed upon it, also, the name of his son Frederick, 'murdered at 

 Osawatomie for his adherence to the cause of freedom' (so reads the inscription) ; and 

 he himself has said, for years, that no other tombstone should mark his grave. 



" For two years, now, that stone has stood there — no oath has been taken upon it, 

 no curses been invoked upon it — it marks the abode of a race who do not curse. But 

 morning and noon, as the sons have gone out to their work on that upland farm, they 

 have passed by it ; the early light over the Adirondacks has gilded it, the red reflection 

 of sunset has glowed back upon it; its silent appeal has perpetually strengthened and 

 sanctified that home — and as the two lately wedded sons went forth jo}-fully on their 



