A DAY IN JUNE

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,

And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
Now is the high-tide of the year,

And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,

Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God wills it.

From "The Vision of Sir Launfal." Abridged.

THE GREAT STONE FACE

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Henry James calls Hawthorne "a delicate, dusky flower" who "sprouted and bloomed" in a crevice of New England granite. The

bells of Independence Day were ringing when, in 1804, Hawthorne was born in the old seaport of Salem, Massachusetts. The Hawthornes were of unbroken Puritan stock. They had gone to meeting, followed the sea and burned witches all with equally good conscience, and it is no wonder that in the pages of their descendant, to whom their qualities filtered, "the cold bright air of New England seems to blow."

As a

boy Hawthorne was seldom with any companion, not even his sisters. Ab

normally shy, he liked better than anything else long walks in the woods alone, unless it was to read poetry and The Pilgrim's Progress. His mother was poor, lived apart for days even from her family, and Hawthorne's life at this time seems dreary and narrow. Bowdoin College, where he went as a young man, offered wider opportunity both in books, and in friendships with Longfellow and Franklin Pierce, afterward president of the United States, who were his classmates. He deliberately devoted himself to literature. All day long he weighed coal at the Salem custom-house, but his imagination was busy at its "game of hide-and-seek," and even the dingy custom-house office with its pine desk and three-legged stool found place in a famous essay. When Hawthorne went to call on Miss Peabody, who became his wife, he was "a splendidly handsome youth, tall and strong." With the publication of The Scarlet Letter

in 1850 his place in American literature was fixed. In 1853 he left his home in the Old Manse in Concord to become consul to Liverpool. His inherited shyness never deserted him, but the few who successfully "carried his fort of bashfulness" were rewarded by the gentlest and most beautiful friendship. He died in 1864.

One afternoon when the sun was going down, a mother and her little boy Ernest 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? The Great Stone Face was a work of Nature in her mood of majestic playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a mountain by some immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as, when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of the human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan, had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose with its long bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other.

"Mother," said Ernest, while the Titanic visage smiled on him, "I wish that it could speak, for it looks so very kindly that its voice must needs be pleasant. If I were to see a man with such a face, I should love him dearly."

"If an old prophecy should come to pass," answered his

mother, "we may see a man, some time or other, with exactly such a face as that."

The prophecy said that at some future day a child should be born hereabout who was destined to become the greatest and noblest man of his time, and whose countenance, in manhood, should bear an exact resemblance to the Great Stone Face..

"O mother, dear mother!" cried Ernest, clapping his hands above his head, "I do hope that I shall live to see him!"

Ernest never forgot the story that his mother told him. It was always in his mind whenever he looked upon the Great Stone Face. He spent his childhood in the log cottage where he was born, and was dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in many things, assisting her much with his little hands, and more with his loving heart. In this manner, from a happy yet thoughtful child, he grew to be a mild, quiet, modest boy, sun-browned with labor in the fields, but with more intelligence in his face than is seen in many lads who have been taught at famous schools. Yet Ernest had had no teacher, save only that the Great Stone Face became one to him. When the toil of the day was over, he would gaze at it for hours, until he began to imagine that those vast features recognized him, and gave him a smile of kindness and encouragement in response to his own look of veneration.

About this time, there went a rumor throughout the

valley that the great man, foretold from ages long ago, who was to bear a resemblance to the Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems that, many years before, a young man had left the valley and settled at a distant seaport, where, after getting together a little money, he had set up as a shopkeeper. His name-but I could never learn whether it was his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success in life--was Gathergold.

It might be said of him, as of Midas in the fable, that whatever he touched with his finger immediately glistened, and grew yellow, and was changed at once into coin. And when Mr. Gathergold had become so rich that it would have taken him a hundred years only to count his wealth, he bethought himself of his native valley, and resolved to go back thither, and end his days where he was born. With this purpose in view, he sent a skilful architect to build him such a palace as should be fit for a man of his vast wealth to live in.

In due time, the mansion was finished; next came the upholsterers, with magnificent furniture; then, a whole troop of black and white servants, the harbingers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majestic person, was expected to arrive at sunset. Our friend Ernest, meanwhile, had been deeply stirred by the idea that the great man, the noble man, the man of prophecy, after so many ages of delay, was at length to be made manifest to his native valley.