The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1898-04-20
with the old Fiddle and help her to tel

with the old Fiddle and help her to tel
it strate. ABNER HILL"
When the governor turned away
from the window there was look on
his face that few had ever seen there
except his wife.
He lifted the violin carefully from
the floor, tore away its wrappings and
looked at 1t long and curiously. 1t was
roughly made of native pine and maple
and vanished with the homemade var
nish of the mountains, but the strings
gave back the true viol tone, clear and
ringing.
Bringing his chair closer to the CRATE
he placed the instrument in position,
drew the bow, and there Sin the still
of the evening let her talk to him."
He was a mountain boy himself and,
as the first soft notes fell on the air,
plaintive and piercing like the cry of
the whippoorwill in the early spring he
felt the youth stir in him and heard
again the far call of the hills.
He saw the log cabin high up against
laurel and the sumac grew and the ash
made bright the scene with its dark
fruit; where the breeze came laden
with the odor of pine from the forest,
and the birds touched the highest notes
in their shrill treble.
He saw the boy with his sturdy
limbs, his bold blue eyes and wavy
hair, barefoot and scantily clad, search
ing for the earliest berries in summer,
and the first nuts in the fall-free, JOY
our, innocent, happy.
He followed him in the ''long, long
thoughts" of a lad across the distant
crest of the "Devil Backbone" and
wove with him mystic dreams amid the
shades of the haunted ravine.
He sat with him at the feet Of the
mountain lass and listened while he
poured the crude poetry of his awak-
ened soul into the sensitive instrument
which alone could interpret the mys-
terry within him.
He stood beside him and watched
the blazing pine-knots roar up the
cabin chimney, while the old folks in
the corner looked at each other across
the boy with that surreptitious tender
ness of the eyes which takes the place,
in those grown gray and sure OF each
other, of the open demonstrations.
He saw the whole twenty-five years
of clean, humble living; the unaspiring,
pastoral life of the southern noun tain
eer, companioned of nature; simple,
fearless, brave; scornful of the false,
reverent of the true; tender to weak
| ness, fierce to wrong; and, alas uncOn-
trolled as the elements around him;
crushing, in some mad output Of
strength, the obstacle in his way, to
stand afterwards in awful recOil before
the unknown potentialities OF his own
organism.
Full and swelling were the strains
that issued forth from the throat Of the
violin as it told this idyl of the hills;
passionate harmonies pulsating like the
overcharged heart; long, tender, yearn-
ing notes, sweet caressing andantes; the
very spirit of love in the guise Of
sound.
But now the music changes. Youths
glad symphony is lost in the wild ma
jor chords of passion. Note dashes note
like the hail against pane. All the
tumult of the mountains, the forest,
the soaring stream when storms rive
the heavens, is sounded in that mad,
chromatic ascending to its climax.
All OF Natures after-penance breathes
in the signing minor of the descending
scale. Surely that was a human sob
that rang through the room; fellow
mortaPs burst of sympathy. No, it
was just the old fiddle, who "knew
things cause she had been lynn 80 long
ag'in in his heart"
And now from out the quivering
strings she sends forth a melody 30 di.
vinely pure, 30 immeasurably sweet,
that the coolest ear must open to greet
it.
In it are the prayers of mothers, the
tears of wives, the sobs of little child
renal of unlanguaged pain, all of
unlanguaged love.
1t is the echo of that song which
beats forever against the throne of
God, in tender, tireless cadence--the
united voices of many women pleading
for the souls of men.
The violin slips from the governors
hands and his head sinks upon his
breast.
The old fiddle has "told her story
straight"
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