INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 491 



him in the Prairie to the furthest bounds of old age, till the splendor 

 of eighty-seven winters dims his eye, and he goes, calm and self- 

 possessed, to meet his death. 



Stifter portrays his Gregory at his first appearance as an extremely 

 old man with waving, snow-white hair. His large, true, sagacious 

 eyes contrast strangely with the two snow-white arches over them. 

 On the hard cheeks lay sunburn, age, and health. " A noble simplicity 

 and goodness was stamped on the whole man." "A comrade of the 

 noonday heat and of the storm, a brother of the rock," he is called. 

 The woodsman, the huntsman, the son of the forest, formerly so keen 

 and daring a hunter, now he is a little weather-worn, and wears 

 some of the "dignity" l of nature ("dignity," a favorite word of 

 Cooper, as for example in this passage of the Pioneers: "with the 

 bearing and dignity of an emperor"). The baron has immoveable 

 confidence in him. 



The Pathfinder is pictured as a man of admirable qualities. Always 

 the same, of single heart, honest, fearless, and yet prudent, in every 

 honorable undertaking the first, in his peculiar way a sort of prototype, 

 as one might conceive Adam before his fall, not, however, that he 

 was completely sinless, full of native tact, that would have done 

 credit to the best education. " His feelings seemed to have the fresh- 

 ness and naturalness of the woods, in which he passed most of his 

 time." His fine, unerring sense of right is perhaps the most distin- 

 guished trait in his moral composition; his fidelity is firm as the 

 rock that no storm can shake, treason is for him an utterly impos- 

 sible thing. His blamelessness, self-devotion, and disinterestedness 

 are often praised. 



Stifter saw his human ideal reali/ed in this character. In the 

 preface to his Motley Stones. 2 where, in opposition to Hebbel, he 

 sketches the programme of his philosophy of life and of art, he says: 

 "A whole life full of righteousness, simplicity, self-control, reason- 

 ableness, efficiency in one's sphere, admiration of the beautiful. 

 joined with a calm and cheerful death, I hold to be great: mighty 

 storms of passion, fearful irruptions of rage, the lust for vengeance. 

 the inflamed spirit that strives for activity, demolishes, alters, destroys, 

 and in the excitement often throws away its own life, 1 hold to be 

 not greater, but less, since these things are. in my eyes, the outcome 

 of single and one-sided forces, as are storms, volcanoes, and earth- 

 quakes." He had to imitate' Cooper, because in essential convictions 

 he was in agreement with him. 



This venerable, prudent ranger or hunter with his serious moral 

 traits, whom men like to call "the old/' is reproduced trait for trait 

 in Gregory, with his experience and wisdom, his foresight and cir- 

 cumspection, his prolix garrulity, with nearly all his views, lie is 

 1 " Ansttmd." 2 Bunte Shine. 



