h as that little lullaby of Tennyson's, _Sweet and Low_,
which J. Barnby seemed to have exactly _tono_-graphed.... Once across
infantry campfires, _Juanita_ came, with a bleeding passion for
home--to him who had no home. There was a lyrical Ireland very dear to
him--songs and poems which wrung him as if he were an exile; Tom
Moore's _Sunflower Song_ incited at first a poignant anguish, as of a
sweetheart's dead face; and _Lead Kindly Light_ brought almost the
first glimmer of spiritual light across the desolate distances of the
world--like a tender smile from a greater being than man. And there
were baleful songs that ran red with blood, as the _Carmagnole_; and
roused past the sense of physical pain, like the _Marseillaise_. What
heroic sins have been committed in their spell! By no means was it all
uplift which the songs brought. There was one night when he heard
_Mandalay_ sung by some British seaman across the dark of a Japanese
harbor. They were going out, and he was coming into port....

These were his sole adventures in music, but they had bound his dreams
together. He had felt, _if the right person were near_, he could have
made music tell things, not to be uttered in mere words; and under the
magic of certain songs, that which was creative within him, even dim
and chaotic, stirred and warmed for utterance.... So fresh a surface
did Bedient bring to the Carreras music-room.

The time had come when his nature hungered for great music. The
orchestrelle added to the Island something he needed soulfully.
Experimenting with the rolls, the stops and the power, he found there
was nothing he could not do in time. Music answered--trombone,
clarionet, horn, bassoon, hautboy, flute, 'cello answered. Volume and
tempo were mere lever matters. On the rolls themselves were
suggestions. Reaching this point, his exaltation knew no bounds. He
looked upon the great array of rolls--symphonies, sonatas, concertos,
fantasies, rhapsodies, overtures, prayers, requiems, meditations,
minuets--and something of that rising power of gratitude overcame him,
as only once before in his life--when he had realized that the Bible
was all _words_, and they were for him. From the first studious
marvellings, Bedient's mind lifted to adoring gratefulness in which he
could have kissed the hands of the toilers who had made this instrument
answer their dreams. Then, he fell deeply into misgiving. It seemed
almost a sacrilege for him to take music so ch