ic friend," he murmured, addressing the Great Stone Face, "is
not this man worthy to resemble thee?"

The Face seemed to smile, but answered not a word.

Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt so far away, had not
only heard of Ernest, but had meditated much upon his character, until
he deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, whose untaught
wisdom walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of his life. One
summer morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and, in the
decline of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great distance
from Ernest's cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly been the
palace of Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, with his
carpet-bag on his arm, inquired at once where Ernest dwelt, and was
resolved to be accepted as his guest.

Approaching the door, he there found the good old man, holding a volume
in his hand, which alternately he read, and then, with a finger between
the leaves, looked lovingly at the Great Stone Face.

"Good evening," said the poet. "Can you give a traveller a night's
lodging?"

"Willingly," answered Ernest; and then he added, smiling, "Methinks I
never saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger."

The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and Ernest talked
together. Often had the poet held intercourse with the wittiest and the
wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughts and
feelings gushed up with such a natural freedom, and who made great
truths so familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, as had been
so often said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labor in the
fields; angels seemed to have sat with him by the fireside; and,
dwelling with angels as friend with friends, he had imbibed the
sublimity of their ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and lowly charm
of household words. So thought the poet. And Ernest, on the other hand,
was moved and agitated by the living images which the poet flung out of
his mind, and which peopled all the air about the cottage-door with
shapes of beauty, both gay and pensive. The sympathies of these two men
instructed them with a profounder sense than either could have attained
alone. Their minds accorded into one strain, and made delightful music
which neither of them could have claimed as all his own, nor
distinguished his own share from the other's. They led one another, as
it were, into a high pavilion of their thoughts, so remo