Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/234

 streamed forth to meet him, and again he came with all the pomp of the former, and again the people cried out, ‘How like he is to the great stone face!’ The youth looked and saw a sallow countenance with really some resemblance to the large features of the face; but, for all that it was very unlike. And after a while he began to remark that the resemblance became still more and more unlike, nor was it long before everybody found out that their great man was not a great man at all, and that he had no similarity to the large stone face. After this he disappeared from the dale. These expectations and these disappointments were repeated yet several times.

At length, although the good clergyman gave up almost entirely his sanguine expectations, he still hoped silently, and continued silently to work in his vocation, but with more and more earnestness, extending yet more and more the sphere of his operations—for ever glancing upwards to that large stone countenance, and, as it were, impressing yet deeper and deeper its features upon his soul. Thus time went on, and the young man had advanced towards middle life; his hair had begun to grow grey, and his countenance to be ploughed by the furrows of advancing years, but the great long-expected stranger had not appeared. But he yet hoped on.

In the meantime, the influence of his life and his labours had ennobled the dales-people, and given beauty to the dale itself. Universal peace and universal prosperity prevailed there during a long course of years. And by this time the locks of the clergyman were of a silvery whiteness; his face had become pale and his features rigid, yet was his countenance beaming with human love. About this time the people began to whisper among themselves, ‘Does not there seem to be a remarkable resemblance between him and the great stone face?’

One evening a stranger came to the clergyman's