that brought tears. Then, timidly and still
softly, it elaborated the theme, weaving in and out through the original
three the glitter and shimmer of a splendid web of sound, spreading
before the awakened imagination a broad river of woods-imagery that
reflected on its surface all the subtler moods of the forest. The pine
shadows, the calls of the wild creatures, the flow of the brook, the
splashes of sunlight through the trees, the sigh of the wind, the shout
of the rapid,--all these were there, distinctly to be felt in their most
ethereal and beautiful forms. And yet it was all slight and tenuous
as though the crack of a twig would break it through--so that over it
continually like a grand full organ-tone repeated the notes of the bird
itself.

With the first sigh of the wonder-music the girl had started and caught
her breath in the exquisite pleasure of it. As it went on they both
forgot everything but the harmony and each other.

"Ah, beautiful!" she murmured.

"What is it?" he whispered marvelling.

"A violin,--played by a master."

The bird suddenly hushed, and at once the strain abandoned the
woods-note and took another motif. At first it played softly in the
higher notes, a tinkling, lightsome little melody that stirred a kindly
surface-smile over a full heart. Then suddenly, without transition, it
dropped to the lower register, and began to sob and wail in the full
vibrating power of a great passion.

And the theme it treated was love. It spoke solemnly, fearfully of the
greatness of it, the glory. These as abstractions it amplified in fine
full-breathed chords that swept the spirit up and up as on the waves
of a mighty organ. Then one by one the voices of other things were
heard,--the tinkling of laughter, the roar of a city, the sob of a
grief, a cry of pain suddenly shooting across the sound, the clank of a
machine, the tumult of a river, the puff of a steamboat, the murmuring
of a vast crowd,--and one by one, without seeming in the least to change
their character, they merged imperceptibly into, and were part of the
grand-breathed chords, so that at last all the fames and ambitions and
passions of the world came, in their apotheosis, to be only parts of the
master-passion of them all.

And while the echoes of the greater glory still swept beneath their
uplifted souls like ebbing waves, so that they still sat rigid and
staring with the majesty of it, the violin softly began to whisper.
Beautiful it