Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1885-10-15


her little head, ITEMS! but can feel before
hand the rose-leaf touch of her lips when
she shall stand on her tip-toe to give her
old father dieMr gros 6ons daisers upon the
cheeksw
Gustave had reached the last landing and
was fumbing at his door.
"Gabrielle,' he called aloud, on opening
it.
No answer, and his face fell.
"She will have been detained to sup, no
doubt, with our good neighbor, Madame
Blanchett," he soliloquized, stumbling
about in the dark to find his matches.
"What, no table spread for the hungry
vieux papa! Careless, petite Gabrielle"
No light, no tempting little feast, no kiss
of welcome, no answering voice! Not then,
nor evermore!
People who cared to join in the mad
struggle for life and limb leading to q re-
hearsal of the Philharmonic society OF New
| York, during that period of time before the
society fell into it's long and trance-like tor
Dor, may have observed among the violins
upon the platform at the Academy OF Mu,
sic blurred and sketchy outline of the old
Thorez who had appeared upon the occasion
of Joakim's debut at the Athenee. The
warlike mustache Topped drearily the eye
| 0aQ lOSC us power W Sledui VI ooAtoh e''S
red ribbon on the worn old coat dropped
like the banner upon a forsaken citadel.
Gustave had traced Gabrielle to Ameri-
ca, and had come in search of her, but in
the city of New York-that great and pitt
| less receiver of an unlawful foreign mer-
chandise-the clew was lost. Obtaining a
place in the orchestra of a reputable socle-
| ty, he had fallen in the groove of solitary
and unfriended life. Among the few who
noticed him at all, Gustave passed for an
honest old artist, whose harmless mania was
the worship of his own violin.
One Friday afternoon, of bleak Decem-
Der day, at the close Of the PHILHARMONIC
rehearsal, Gustave passed out of Fourt teenth
street into Broadway, where, saunterlng
aimlessly down the sunny side of the block,
he saw a lady descend from a carriage in
front of fashionable shop. He did not
half shrouding a slender form, nor that
beautiful yelled face, that tress of escaping
golden hair, if not his Gabrielle's?
Gasping for breath, Gustave held the vi
olin against his breast and waited. When
she came out of the shop on her way to the
carriage he intercepted her. Without a
glace She waved him impatiently aside.
"Gabrielle?" cried Thorez, with all his
broken heart in that single word:
The girl started, looked him in the face
and caught her breath.
"You are mistaken, my good man, or
mad. DO you want charity, or shall l ask
the aid Of a policeman to help me to my
carriagew
"Gabrielieu the old man said again, fall
ing back as if he had been shot.
At this juncture an interposing police
man took Gustave in charge, and without
elaborate inquiry, consigned him, with the
violin, to a nights lodging in the station
house.
From that night of despair dated the
downfall of his self-respect. His habits, be-
fore respectable, lapsed through every stage
from bad to worse and worst.
Losing his standing with musical societies
of the highest rank, Gustave at the outset
did not find it hard to earn a livelihood.
Upon the first occasion when he was engag-
ed to play for dancing at second rate bali,
Gustave fiddled like madman through
the night, then went home to shed tears
upon his desecrated violin. After work in
the orchestras of petty theatres came music
halls, then lower drinking dens. When
once the old musician came out OF one OF
these haunts to stink homeward in the gray
of morning, he fell upon the icy sidewalk,
and in trying to save his violin, received a
severe conclusion of the brain.
Getting up from his cot at Bellevue hos
pital, after many days of prostration, some
| thing of Gustave's better nature came back
to him. The nurse in his ward, finding the
old fellow expert and bidable made quite a
pet of him, and Gustave, during his cOnVa-
! fescence, began hopping about in the sun
shine of human warmth like u reviVing
sparrow.
One day in March, when the winds were
| working havoc with fiueS and chimney
draughts, the nurse of pavilion ward call
ed old Gustave in to try his skill on a re-
fractory stove pipe in her department.
Close by where he was set to work, a
screen surrounded one of the beds, and a
litter stationed there told too plainly that
the fleet of the dead" were about to be car
ried out.
"Here, Thorez, lend hand, will you ?"
said his friend the nurse, coming from from p Pc :;
morning, and Pm in 'urry to get this poor
creature out of the ward at once. Pm all
hupset with the night she has given me,
and can truly say more pitiful case never
fell under my hobservatiOn at 'ome or ERE.
Since she took the bad turn yesterday she's
done nothing but jabber French and call
'papan She aint got a friend on hearth
that 'hever | see, and she such q regular
beauty! Heart disease it was, and shame
and misery that did the work: Hits all
ready, now; you take the feet will you?'
Gustave obeyed, and mechanically did
the work assigned him. AS the men car
ried their covered burden out of the pavil-
ion through the open yard, a gust of wind,
blowing suddenly across the river, lifted the
sheet from off the shrOuded form.
Then Gustave saw again the face Of Ga
| brielle. When dismissed from the hospital,
he wandered back to his old lodging, where,
for charity's sake the people gave him shell
| ter for the night. Until nearly morning he
| leaned in stupor over the table, resting
his cheek upon the violin.
Just before dawn he lifted the instrument
and tried to play. 1t was faint and tune
less echo of the theme from Bach which
Joachim had rendered at the concert OF the
Athenee.
Gustave dropped his bow, and seizing
a fire-iron from the hearth, struck with all
his force upon the violin, setting free for
ever the sweet spirit it enshrined;:
When, a few days after the rushing river
yielded up her dead, the body of Gustave
Thorez was washed in upon the Fort Ham,
ilton shore.
Upon high shelf in the cupboard of his
room, beside the wreck Of an old French
opera hat, making dusty and feeble asser-
tion to remote respectability some people
of the house found the shattered remnant of
thedead musicians violin, in which mouse
was rearing her brood.-C0nstttnce Curey
Harrison, in Harper's Weekly.
JUST A HINT TO BOYs.-I stood in a
store the other day when boy came in and
applied for a situation.
"Can you write good hand ?" was asked.
HNaaC -