st meets the double requirement of thought and
act, he still hoped "that some wiser and better man than himself would
by and by appear." If a man once catches up with his ideal, it ceases to
be an ideal. Ernest did not think that he had attained.

_Characters_. Ernest, like Scrooge, is a developing character. He did
not have as far to go as Scrooge and his development was differently
wrought; but both passed from weakness to strength and from isolation to
service, the one through the ministry of a single profound experience,
the other through the constant challenge of a high ideal. The other
characters fall below Ernest because they did not relate themselves as
whole-heartedly to the influence of the Great Stone Face. Mr.
Gathergold, type of the merely rich man, Old Blood-and-Thunder, type of
the merely military hero, Old Stony Phiz, type of the merely eloquent
statesman, the easily satisfied people, type of the fickle crowd, and at
last the gifted poet, type of the discord between words and works, all
were natives of the same valley of opportunity. But the Great Stone Face
was the measure of their defect rather than the means of their
attainment because, unlike Esther and Scrooge and Ernest, they were
"disobedient unto the heavenly vision."]

One afternoon, when the sun was going down, a mother and her little boy
sat at the door of their cottage, talking about the Great Stone Face.
They had but to lift their eyes, and there it was plainly to be seen,
though miles away, with the sunshine brightening all its features.

And what was the Great Stone Face?

Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains, there was a valley so
spacious that it contained many thousand inhabitants. Some of these good
people dwelt in log huts, with the black forest all around them, on the
steep and difficult hillsides. Others had their homes in comfortable
farm-houses, and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or level
surfaces of the valley. Others, again, were congregated into populous
villages, where some wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down from its
birthplace in the upper mountain region, had been caught and tamed by
human cunning, and compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories.
The inhabitants of this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many
modes of life. But all of them, grown people and children, had a kind of
familiarity with the Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift
of distinguishing this gran