The innocents abroad; . theboulder. It was splendid. It went crashing down the hill-side, tearing up saplings, mowing bushes down like grass,ripping and crushing and smashing every thing in its path—eternally splintered and scattered a wood pile at the foot of thehill, and then sprang from the high bank clear over a dray inthe road—the negro glanced up once and dodged—and the nextsecond it made infinitesimal mince-meat of a frame cooper-shop,and the coopers swarmed out like bees. Then we said it wasperfectly magnificent, and left. Because the coopers werestarting up the hill to inquire. Still,
The innocents abroad; . theboulder. It was splendid. It went crashing down the hill-side, tearing up saplings, mowing bushes down like grass,ripping and crushing and smashing every thing in its path—eternally splintered and scattered a wood pile at the foot of thehill, and then sprang from the high bank clear over a dray inthe road—the negro glanced up once and dodged—and the nextsecond it made infinitesimal mince-meat of a frame cooper-shop,and the coopers swarmed out like bees. Then we said it wasperfectly magnificent, and left. Because the coopers werestarting up the hill to inquire. Still, that mountain, prodigious as it was, was nothi!ig to thePyramid of Cheops. I could conjure up no comparison thatwould convey to my mind a satisfactory comprehension of themagnitude of a pile of monstrous stones that covered thirteenacres of ground and stretched upward four hundred and eightytiresome feet, and so I gave it up and walked down to theSphynx. After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great. THE MAJESTIC SPHYNX. 629 face was so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There wasa dignity not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a be-nignity such as neyer any thing human wore. It was stone,but it seemed sentient. If ever image of stone thought, it wasthinking. It was looking toward the verge of the landscape,yet looking at nothing—nothing but distance and vacancy. Itwas looking over and beyond every thing of the present, andfar into the past. It was gazing out over the ocean of Time—over lines of century-waves which, further and further reced-ing, closed nearer and nearer together, and blended at last intoone unbroken tide, away toward the horizon of remote anti-quity. It was thinking of the wars of departed ages ; of theempires it had seen created and destroyed; of the nationswhose birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched,whose annihilation it had noted ; of the joy and sorrow, thelife and death, the grandeur and decay, of f
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectvoyagesandtravels
