The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-03-21
THE PASSING BELLS

"Thomas Doubleway, Violin Maker was the legend over the door of the little shop in a by-street of the reat city whither often turned my steps on the days when the thoughts 1 wished for would not come, and 1t seemed to me that l had taken the wrong thread of lifes tangle, so that every effort but drew the weary web into more hopeless con- fusion. Entering there one late autumn day, when the leaves were falling fast from the smoke-dwarfed lindens along the narrow street, found the old violin maker with newly completed instru- ment in hand, patiently engaged in finding the true place of the sounding post. He was silent man, except when some event loosened his tongue, and many minutes passed without a sound, save as the violin maker drew the bow across the strings at each new setting of the post, each time with the same heavy and hteless notes, mere noise, void of soul or melody. Finally, after a last hair's- breadth variation of the position of the post, there came forth, as the bow touched the strings, deep, soulful vibra- tion, which voiced the completion of a new creature in perfect accord and har- meny with itself-no longer dull piece of artihcer's cunningly joined work-no more forced assemblage of separate and nnresponsive parts, but tender harmony ot sympathetic elements, all moved alike by the hand of him who touched the strings to express every emotion of the human heart and soul.
 The position of the sounding post is the point of sympathy" said the violin maker, the soul of the instrument"
 "The soul2" repeated.
 "Yes, soul. All these things have been alive. There are days, and suns, and rains-nights and moonlight, and dews, winter storms, spring time joys-yes, and loves and losses for the tree as for the man each has left its impress in the fiber of the wood, and each can vet re. sPond to its sympathetic vibration. Why else can l not make two instruments alike can make each part of precisely the same shape and size; can give each the same thickness, and taper, and swell, and yet no two instruments will be the same. Some are forever dull and life less; there is no point of contact between the two surfaces which will make them move in unison to express the emotions of the player. How can this be save that there is want of harmony in the lives, in the memories, in the souls, as said, of the pieces ?"
 The violin maker ceased speaking and drew the bow again across the strings of his new creation, bringing forth soft chords of tender remembrance and undv- ing affection.
 "You think now of those whom you have held dear," said he; "so do 1. As listen to the tones of this instrument, 1 recall afresh the lives of the two who were nearest and dearest to my-own :; the lives of my mother and my sister Annie"
 ."I have never heard you speak of either," said !.
 "I do not often speak of them," said the violin maker. "To me their memo ries are intensely sad, and yet "-he paused in his speech, and played again, bringing forth tender melody which told of loves lost and parted, but ever held sacred, and closing with a strain of celestial exaltation, glorious revelation of heaven which held love perfected and intending.
 The violin maker leaned back in his high, leathern- covered chair and said : 1t is the voice of my sister Annie, speaking through years to me. She had a strange life. Perhaps all of our lives were strange, in that little village on the coast. My father, named as am, Thomas Doubleway, married early the tenderiy loved daughter of John Seacliffe |, and my sister Annie and myself were near the same age; was first born and our father died brfore my remembrance. He was gay, handsome, frank fellow, so those who knew him have said, and all tue light of the world died out for his young wife when the church-yard mould fell upon his coffin. Half year after his death Annie was born. She was through all the early years of her life like our father, gay and light of heart, beauti- ful of form and feature, and lovely when she came to be a woman, with the SC. riousness of life in her soft, dark eyes. Some change came to her life in those days. Our mother died and was laid be- side our father, and we were left to the care of our grandfather, old John Sea- clife, who had loved our mother beyond all things else in the world, and now turned the affections of his lonely old heart to her daughter Annie, who had, when she sat in reverie, the same sweet seriousness about the mouth that made her mothers face 90 tenderly beautiful in youth.
 "I said some change came to Annie's liie as her laughing girl-world widened into that of womanhood. We had both been sleepwalkers from our earliest re- membranes, and Annie's somnambulism was more frequent and of longer duration than my own. With mo some particular motive of excitement was needed, some special event of the day, to cause me to sCspyright, 1888.