Gumb?' I began, to feel queer; it seemed
to me there was something awful about the
unknown man. I even shook. Then he said
again, 'Fear nothing. The happiest man in
all the earth is he that wins his daily bread
by his daily sweat, if he will but fear God
and do man no wrong.' I bent down my
head like any one confounded, and I greatly
wondered who this strange appearance could
be. He was not like a preacher, for he looked
me full in the face; nor a bit like a parson,
for he seemed very meek and kind. I began
to think it was a spirit, only such ones always
come by night, and here was I at noonday,
and at work. So I made up my mind to drop
my hammer and step up and ask his name
right out. But when I looked up he was gone,
and that clear out of sight, on the bare wide
moor suddenly. I only wish that I had gone
forward at once and felt him with my hand and
found out if he was a real man or only a
resemblance. What could it mean? Mem. to ask Mr.
C." This event is recorded in a more formal and
painful handwriting than the other MSS. which
survive. Nothing could be further removed
from superstition or fear than this man's whole
character and mind. Hard as one of his native
rocks, and accurate as a diagram, yet here is a
tinge of that large and artless belief which is so
inseparable from a Keltic origin, and which is
so often manifested by the strongest and loftiest
minds. Another paragraph, written on the blank
page of an almanack, run thus: " Found to-day,
in the very heart of a slab of rock that came
out below the granite, the bony skeleton of a
strange animal, or rather some kind of fish. The
stone had never been broken into before, and
looked ages older than the rocks above. Now
how came this creature to get in, and to die
and harden there? Was it before Adam's time,
or since? What date was it? But what can
we tell about dates after all? Time is nothing
but Adam's clock—a measurement that men
invented to reckon by. This very rock with the
creature in it was made, perhaps, before there
was any such thing as time, in eternity may
be; that is, before there were any dates begun.
At all events, when God did make the rock, He
must have put the creature there." This
appears to be a singular and rude anticipation of
modern discovery, and a simple solution of a
question of science in our own and later time.
It is to be lamented that these surviving details
of a thoughtful and original life are so few and
far between. Gumb appears to have united in
his native character the simplicity of an ancient
hermit and the stern contempt of the solitary
student for the busy hum of men, with the
brave resolution and independent energy of
mind which have won success and fame for
some of our self-made sons of science and skill.
But his opportunities were few, and the
severance of his life and abode from contact with his
fellow men forbade that access to the discoveries
and researches of his kind which might have
rendered him, in other days, the Hugh Miller
of the rocks or the Stephenson or Watt of a
scientific solitude. He and his wife inhabited
their wedded cell for many years and long. The
mother on her stony couch gladdened her
anxious husband with sons and daughters; but
she had the courage to brave her woman's trials
alone, for neither midwife nor doctor were ever
summoned to "the rock." These, as may well
be imagined, were all literally educated at home;
but only one of their children, his name was
John, appears to have inherited his father's habits
or energy. He succeeded to the caverned home
after Daniel's death, and when his mother had
returned to her native village to die also, the
existence of John Gumb is casually seen
recorded as one of the skilful hewers of stone at
the foot of Carradon. But Daniel died "an old
man full of days," and he was carried after all
"ad plures," and to the silent society of men, in
the churchyard of the parish wherein stood afar
off his rocky home. He won and he still deserves
a nook of remembrance among the legendary
sons of the west, "the giants" of Keltic
race, "the mighty men that were of old, the men
of renown." His mind, though rough-hewn, like
a block of his native granite, must have been
well balanced: resolute and firm reliance on a
man's own resources, and disdain of external
succour, have ever been a signal of native genius,
to be able to live alone, according to the adage
of an ancient sage, a man must be either an
angel or a demon. Gumb was neither, but a
simple, strong-hearted, and intellectual man. He
had the "mens sana in corpore sano" of the
poet's aspiration. A scenic taste and a mind
"to enjoy the universe" he revealed in the very
choice of his abode. In utter scorn of the
pent-up city, and dislike for the reek of the
multitude, he built, like "the Kenite, his nest
in the rock;" nor did he pitch his stony tent by
chance, or in a casual place in the wild. He
chose and he fixed his home where his eye could
command and exult in a stretch of circumferent
scenery a hundred and fifty miles on surrounding
extent. In the east, he greeted the morning
sun, as he mounted the rugged saddle of Dartmoor
and Exmoor for his daily career. To the
west, Roche, the rock of the ruined hermitage,
lifted a bold and craggy crest to the sky, where
long centuries before another solitary of more
ascetic mind, lay, like the Patriarch on his
pillow of granite, and reared a ladder to Heaven
by the energy of nightly prayer. Far, far away
to the westward, the haughty sun of England
went into the storied Sea of Arthur and his
knights, and touched, caressingly, the heights
of grim Dundagel, with a lingering halo of
light. These were the visions that soothed and
surrounded the worker at his daily toil, and
roused and strengthened the energies of the
self-sustaining man. The lessons of the legend
of Daniel Gumb are simple, and earnest, and
strong. The words of supernatural wisdom
might be graven as an added superscription on
his rock, "Whatsoever thou doest, do it with
all thine heart." If thou be a man, friendless
and alone, the slave of the hammer or the axe,
and doomed to the sweat of labour, day by