236 I GO A- FISHING. 



" I remember years ago you startled me with an idea 

 as we were floating on the lake one afternoon. We had 

 not spoken for a long time, when you suddenly said, 

 'John, God made that face in the mountain before he 

 had formed man in his own image.' I never wondered 

 after that at the old story that the Indians worshiped the 

 great stone face." 



" It is only a story. They never worshiped it. But 

 the son of the forest was undoubtedly deeply impressed 

 with the grandeur of that face. Its immutability in sun 

 and storm could not but give to the red man, however 

 thoughtless, the idea of immortality. He looked at it, 

 and I do not think he could fail to catch the idea that 

 the rocky face, stern, cold, and unimpressed with mind or 

 thought, could not be equal in duration to the existence 

 of man. The very clouds that drift over it, dashing their 

 cold mists on the forehead of the mountain-man, taught 

 him not to worship it. The winds that swept across it, 

 with tempestuous laughter and moans, forbade him to 

 think of it as other than a strange work of the Great Spirit, 

 without soul, an emblem, a lesson. Nature spoke to him, 

 and the face on the mountain had its voice, but com- 

 manded only his respect for the mighty sculptor. Nature 

 does not teach idolatry. That is one of the grandest les- 

 sons of such scenery as this. The Chamouni Hymn, not 

 Coleridge's, but the German who was it ? I forget is 

 very fine and tells the whole truth. The glacier, the Alp, 

 the clouds, all alike speak of one ' to whom, wild Arvei- 

 ron, rolls up the sound of thy terrible harmonies.' " 



" I have never seen such evening lights as we have 

 here." 



" Nor I. The grandeur of evening in the Franconia 

 Notch is beyond all words nay, is beyond human ability 



