CHAPTER VIII
On the Forehead of the Old Man of the Mountain
The camp next morning was still asleep at daybreak, and for the first time, almost, in the history of the Southmead Scouts Art was not the first to wake. He and Peanut were both asleep when the rest sat up and rubbed their eyes, and it was not till Rob rattled a pan and Lou began to chop wood that the two boys aroused.
“Because you’re heroes is no reason you should be lazy,” Rob laughed.
Peanut propped himself up on his elbow, and regarded the scene. The sun had not yet risen high enough to look in over the northern shoulders of Lafayette, and it was still dim among the great hemlocks. Some forest birds were singing sweetly, a hermit thrush far off sounding like a fairy clarion. The brook could be heard running close by. The woods smelled fresh and fragrant.
“I don’t believe I’ll get up at all,” Peanut announced. “Rather like it here. Gee, but I slept hard last night! Bet I made a dent in the ground.”
“Won’t get up at all, eh?” Rob remarked, setting down the coffee-pot. “We need more wood. Out with you!”
He took hold of Peanut’s blanket, and rolled the occupant out upon the bare ground.
Peanut picked himself up sleepily, and hunted his tooth-brush out of his pack. “Oh, very well!” he said, starting down to the brook for his morning wash. “Only it would be nice one day just to lie around in camp, and do nothing.”
“We’ll do just that, when we get to the Great Gulf, or Tuckerman’s Ravine, perhaps,” said Mr. Rogers. “But not to-day. Besides, we’re going to get a motor ride this afternoon.”
It was after seven o’clock before camp was struck. They left everything packed and ready to put aboard the motor after lunch, and armed only with a small package of raisins apiece, which Mr. Rogers had mysteriously produced from his pack, and the last of the sweet chocolate, and with their staffs and canteens, and the book, they set off.
“Seems good to be going light,” somebody remarked.
“It does that,” said Art. “Let’s whoop it up this morning. By the way, we haven’t cut our mileage for two days.”
“We can do it at lunch,” said Peanut. “Won’t take us long to eat what we’ve got. That’s a lead pipe. Say, Mr. Rogers, did you have those raisins yesterday?”
“You’ll never know!” the Scout Master laughed.
The path up Cannon Mountain (which, by the way, is called Cannon Mountain because a rock on what looks like the summit from the Profile House resembles a cannon) started in near the hotel, and lost no time about ascending. It began to go up with the first step, in fact, through an evergreen forest, and it never stopped going up till it emerged from the evergreens upon bare rock, two miles away, directly across the Notch from the point on Lafayette where the path reaches the end of Eagle Cliff.
“Looks as if you could almost throw a stone across,” said Peanut.
The boys now saw that the real summit of Cannon was a mile away to the west, and instead of looking down, as they had expected to do, upon the top of Bridal Veil falls on the west side, where their real mountain trip had begun, they were a long distance from the falls. The Old Man lay to the south of them, and it was toward him they made their way, standing presently on top of the precipice above his massive forehead, and looking southward through the Notch. What a view it was! The ground below their feet fell sheer away out of sight, fifteen hundred feet to the valley below. To the right was the great wall of Kinsman, to the left the bare scarred ridges of Lafayette, Lincoln, Haystack and Liberty, along which they had plodded the day before. In the green Notch between they could see the white road and the little Pemigewassett River flashing through the trees, on their way to the Flume House, and far off, where the Notch opened out into the sunny distances, the town of North Woodstock. Beyond the opening, the boys could see the far blue mountains to the south.
“That’s what the Old Man of the Mountain is forever looking at, boys,” said Mr. Rogers. “Not a bad view, eh?”
“It’s wonderful!” said Lou.
The Scouts now lay down on the rocks, and Mr. Rogers opened the book to the story of “The Great Stone Face.”
“This story,” he began, “was written in Berkshire County, pretty close to our home—in Lenox, in a little red house at the head of Stockbridge Bowl, in the summer of 1851, when Hawthorne was living there. It isn’t exactly about this particular Old Man of the Mountain, as you will see from the description. It’s really about a sort of ideal great stone face. But of course it was suggested to Hawthorne by this one.”
Then he read the story aloud. I wish all my readers, before they go any further in this book, would get Hawthorne’s “Twice Told Tales,” and read it, too, right now. If you’ve read it before, read it again. And try to imagine, as you read it, that Rob and Lou and Frank and Art and Peanut were listening to it, not in school, not in a house, but sitting fifteen hundred feet above the Notch, almost on the forehead of the Great Stone Face itself, and looking off at exactly the same view he looks at, fifty miles into the blue distance.
When Mr. Rogers had finished the story, none of the boys spoke for a minute. Then Peanut said, his brows contracted, “I’m not sure I quite get it.”
Lou was gazing off thoughtfully down the valley.
“I think it means that Ernest was the man who fulfilled the prophecy and grew to look like the Great Stone Face because he didn’t try to become rich, or a great fighter, or a politician, or even a poet looking for fame, but just tried to live as good a life as he could. He was a kind ofstillman, and it makes you want to be still and just sit andthink, to look out over the world the way the Great Stone Face does.”
Mr. Rogers nodded his head in approval. “You’ve got the idea, Lou,” he said. “I want all of you to get something of it, too. There is a lot to be learned from mountains as well as fun to be had climbing them. I don’t believe any of you realized that to-day is Sunday, did you?”
“Gee, I hadn’t!” cried Peanut “Tramping this way, you lose track of time.”
“Neither had I,” said the rest.
“Well, it is,” Mr. Rogers laughed. “And this is our way of going to church. You remember what the Bible says about the mountains? ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh even from the Lord.’ You see, long, long ago, men felt about the mountains as we do now—that there was something big and eternal about them; and just as the Pemigewassett Indians thought that the Great Spirit lived on Moosilauke, and perhaps worshipped the Great Stone Face here, so the men in Bible days thought of the hills as the symbol of God’s dwelling place. Then later, in our own time, we find Ernest in the story refusing to judge men by worldly standards, but judging them by whether they resemble the Great Stone Face—that is, judging them by whether they were calm, and sweet, and good, like the mountains, and the forests, and the still places.
“As Lou says, Ernest was astillman—that is, he wasn’t bustling around making war or making money. When you come to think about it, the still men are the greatest. The greatest man who ever lived was Jesus Christ and He changed all history by the Sermon on the Mount; not by making wars like Napoleon, but by new ideas which He had thought out, and by teaching love of your fellow men. Darwin, experimenting with plants and fishes and animals and bugs, reached the theory of evolution, which made the nineteenth century so wonderful. He was a still man. He didn’t fight nor make money nor shout at the crowds, yet he altered the whole conception of science and religion and human thought. Ernest in the story just stayed down there in his own valley, under the shadow of the mountain, and did his daily work quietly, and loved his neighbors, and preached wise words to them, and made his corner of the world a little better and happier—and suddenly it washewho resembled the Great Stone Face.
“Look out, boys, over the Notch, and see what the Old Man sees. Doesn’t it make all our little human rows and rights and ambitions seem small and petty? The Old Man will still be looking when you and I are dead and forgotten. While we are here, however, let’s try to be a bit like him, worthy of this view, and not talk too much unless we have something to say, and be charitable with all our neighbors, and just try to remember that no matter if lessons in school don’t go right, or we are licked in baseball, Lafayette and Cannon and Kinsman are still here, the Old Man is still looking down the valley. Let’s lift up our eyes unto the hills, and get strength. Next winter, if you feel like being cross to your mother some morning, or doing a mean thing to somebody who’s done a mean thing to you, just remember this view, just say to yourself, ‘The Great Stone Face is looking calmly down the valley, and expects me to be calm, too, and generous, and kind, because those things are what really make men great.’ Will you try to remember, boys?”
“Sure!” cried Peanut.
“I can never forget this view,” said Lou.
“Whenever I get sore or cross, I always go out in the woods,” said Art.
“Say,” Peanut added, “Iliketo go to church this way!”
The rest laughed; and “church” was over for the morning. The boys now munched their raisins, and cut their last two days’ mileage on their staffs. From the camp on Moosilauke to Lost River was four miles, through the river one, back to the store for the packs, two more, to North Woodstock five, and up to the camp by the Flume House six. That made eighteen miles, and Art and Peanut added another mile on their staffs for their walking during the pursuit of the burglars. The mileage for the next day, according to Art’s pedometer, showed nine miles from camp to the Pool and then to the top of Lafayette, and five miles down the mountain and to the base camp. Then there were two more miles of walking about to Mr. Goodwin’s house, Echo Lake, the Profile, and so on—a total of sixteen.
The boys washed down their frugal meal of raisins and chocolate with all the water from the canteens (“Gee,” said Frank, “it beats all how much you drink on mountains. I suppose it’s due to the rapid evaporation.”) and shortly before one began the descent. It was made in quick time. With no packs to bother them, the Scouts could vault on their poles, and they came down the two miles in seventeen minutes. They were hot and panting at the base, and surprised at their own record.
“Takes you in the front of your legs, and in behind your knees,” said Frank. “I suppose that’s because we don’t develop those holding-in muscles on the level.”
“Well, we’ll develop ’em before we get home, I guess,” said Peanut, rubbing his shins.
They now went to the Goodwins’ house to pay their party call, and say good-bye, and then returned to camp to wait for the motor. They had all their stuff out beside the road when the car, a big, seven passenger touring car, came along, and in they piled. They drew lots for the front seat, and Peanut won. The other five got into the tonneau, and with a shout, the car started up—or rather down the road, for they were on the top of a hill.