arations were made to receive the illustrious statesman; a cavalcade of horsemen set forth to meet him at the boundary line of the state, and all the people left their business and gathered along the wayside to see him pass.

The cavalcade came prancing along the road, with a great clattering of hoofs and a mighty cloud of dust. "Confess it," said one of Ernest's neighbors to him, "the Great Stone Face has met its match at last!"

Now, it must be owned that, at his first glimpse of the countenance which was bowing and smiling from the barouche, Ernest did fancy that there was a resemblance between it and the old familiar face upon the mountain side. The brow, with its massive depth and loftiness, and all the other features, indeed, were bold and strong. But the grand expression of a divine sympathy that illuminated the mountain visage might here be sought in vain.

Ernest turned away, melancholy, and almost despondent for this was the saddest of his disappointments, to behold a man who might have fulfilled the prophecy, and had not willed to do so. Meantime, the cavalcade, the banners, the music, and the barouches swept past him, with the shouting crowd in the rear, leaving the dust to settle down, and the Great Stone Face to be revealed again, with the grandeur that it had worn for untold centuries.

"Lo, here I am, Ernest!" the benign lips seemed to say. "I have waited longer than thou, and am not yet weary Fear not; the man will come."

The years hurried onward, treading in their haste on one another's heels. And now they began to bring white hairs and scatter them over the head of Ernest; they made wrinkles across his forehead and furrows in his cheeks. He was an aged man. grown old; more than the white the wise thoughts in his mind.

But not in vain had he

hairs on his head were And Ernest had ceased

to be obscure. Unsought for, undesired, had come the fame which so many seek, and made him known in the great world, beyond the limits of the valley in which he had dwelt so quietly.

While Ernest had been growing up and growing old, a bountiful Providence had granted a new poet to this earth. He, likewise, was a native of the valley, but had spent the greater part of his life at a distance from that romantic region, pouring out his sweet music amid the bustle and din of cities.

The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. He read them after his customary toil, seated on the bench before his cottage-door, where for such a length of time he had filled his repose with thought, by gazing at the Great Stone Face.

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"O majestic friend," he murmured, addressing the Great Stone Face, "is not this man worthy to resemble thee?” The Face seemed to smile, but answered not a word. Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt so far away, had not only heard of Ernest, but had meditated

much upon his character, until he deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man whose untaught wisdom walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of his life. 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.

Approaching the door, he there found the good old man, holding a volume in his hand, which 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 traveler 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."

At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest was to speak to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the open air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went along, proceeded to the spot.

It was a small nook among the hills, with a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants, that made a tapestry for the naked rock by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles.

At a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a niche, spacious

enough to admit a human figure. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended and threw a look of familiar kindness around upon his audience.

Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in his heart and mind. They accorded with his thoughts; and his thoughts had reality and depth, because they harmonized with the life which he had always lived.

At a distance, but distinctly to be seen, high up in the golden light of the setting sun, appeared the Great Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the white hairs around the brow of Ernest. Its look of grand beneficence seemed to embrace the world.

At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter, the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so full of benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his arms aloft and shouted:"Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone Face!"

Then all the people looked and saw that what the deepsighted poet said was true. The prophecy was fulfilled.

But Ernest, having finished what he had to say, took the poet's arm, and walked slowly homeward, still hoping that some wiser and better man than himself would by and by appear, bearing a resemblance to the Great Stone Face.

Abridged.

THE RUNAWAY CANNON

BY VICTOR HUGO

Early in the last century there was born in Paris a child named Victor Hugo, who was so frail that no one thought he could live.

But his tender and loving mother saved him by her care and gave France and the world a strong and brilliant man. Victor Hugo's father was an officer in the army, sent now to Corsica, now to Italy and again to Spain. Madame Hugo and her three young sons went too. In Italy Victor and his brothers played at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius. At the Spanish court the king was very fond of Victor and meant to make him a page. But the

Hugos moved back to Paris. Hugo himself has told us of the fine old house where they lived, with its pleasant court in which there was a well and a willow tree. Beside the house was a large garden which had once belonged to an abbey and which was planted in chestnut and fruit trees. He remembered always with affection this garden, "shut in by high walls, sown with flowers, full of the murmur of voices, with almost an open field in its midst, almost a forest in the rear." But more interesting even than the garden was the strange man who lived in an old house at its foot, under Madame Hugo's protection. This man, who was an officer in hiding, played with the boys, told them stories and helped Victor in his Latin. One day he was found and taken away to be shot, which made Victor very sad. A little girl of the neighborhood named Adèle, who came to play in the garden, helped to comfort him. At twelve Victor and his brother Eugene were sent to a large school. Both