Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/203

Rh and chaotic. It may be, perchance, once on a time, that he was linked with the snow-white and pure Iztaccihuatl; and charmed the eye as he nobly towered over her—the two one. But his rude, tumultuous violence severed from his side, nevermore to again return, the Woman in White, who was once a part of his soulless self. His mutterings were heard for a time; but the fabled anguish that once found vent is no longer heard; his grief for his once loved Iztaccihuatl is hushed. Men suffer and are silent, mountains are silent but suffer not. Men and mountains may never grieve, because they may be alike soulless. Contrasting with the dark, gloomy cone that seems to scowl on the scene, ever ready to break out into angry thunders, and startle the sleeping world, is clearly outlined against the sky the Woman in White at rest upon her couch in the peaceful sleep of the just or the dead. Her face is upturned to heaven, white, cold, beautiful, looking into the great unknown depths of the sky, smiling in her hopes of the great hereafter, unmindful of the grim, misshapen cone that towers from afar.