ad.
"He played the Largo well--didn't he? That was made for the organ.
But some way I like the big things. The Largo is like running a little
twenty-horse-power steam mill, and selling to the home grocers. But
'The Ride of the Valkyries,' with those screaming discords of brass,
and those magnificent crashes of harmony--Jane, I've got an
idea--Wagner's work is the National Provisions Company set to music,
and I'm the first trombone." He laughed and reached for his wife's
hand and kissed it; then he rose and stood before her, admiring her in
the starlight, as he exclaimed: "And you are those clarinets, sweet
and clear and delicious, that make a man want to cry for sheer joy.
Come on, my dear--isn't it very late?" And the little man limped
across the grass up the steps and into the house. The two stopped a
moment while he listened to the roar of the water and the rumble of
the mill, that glowed in the night like a phosphorescent spectre. He
squeezed her hand and cried out in exultation, "It's great, isn't
it--the finest mill on this planet, my dear--do you realize that?"
And then they turned into the house.

The next morning he kept two stenographers busy; he was spinning the
web of his reorganization, bringing about a condition under which men
were compelled to exchange their stock in the National Provisions
Company for their former property. He was a crafty little man, and his
ways were sometimes devious, even though to outward view his
advertised and proclaimed methods were those of a pirate. So when he
had dictated a day's work to two girls, he went nosing through the
mill, loafing in the engine rooms, looking at the water wheel, or
running about rafters in the fifth floor like a great gray rat. As he
went he hummed little tunes under his breath or whistled between his
teeth, with his lips apart. After luncheon he unlocked a row-boat, and
took a cane pole and rowed himself a mile up the mill-pond, and
brought home three good-sized bass. Thus did he spend his idle moments
around the Ridge. That night he thumped his piano and longed for a
pipe organ. The things he tried to play were noisy, and his mother,
sitting in the gloaming near him, sighed and said: "John, play some of
the old pieces--the quieter ones; play 'The Long and Weary Day' and
some of the old songs. Have you forgotten the 'Bohemian Girl' and
those Schubert songs?"

His fingers felt their way back to his boyhood, and when he ceased
playing, he stood by h