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 of still man, and it makes you want to be still and just sit and think, 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?"
