One
summer morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and, in
the decline of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great
distance from Ernest's cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly
been the palace of Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet,
with his carpet-bag on his arm, inquired at once where Ernest dwelt,
and was resolved to be accepted as his guest.
Approaching the door, he there found the good old man holding a volume
in his hand, which alternately he read, and then, with a finger
between the leaves, looked lovingly at the Great Stone Face.
"Good evening," said the poet. "Can you give a traveller a night's
lodging?"
"Willingly," answered Ernest; and then he added, smiling, "Methinks I
never saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger."
The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and Ernest talked
together. Often had the poet held intercourse with the wittiest and
the wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughts
and feelings gushed up with such a natural freedom, and who made great
truths so familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, as had
been so often said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labour in
the fields; angels seemed to have sat with him by the fireside; and,
dwelling with angels as friend with friends, he had imbibed the
sublimity of their ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and lowly charm
of household words. So thought the poet.
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