description.
Is not a fair spirit predestined conqueror of flesh and blood? Have we
not read of the noble lady whose loveliness a painter's eye was the
very first to discover? Where the likeness? The soul saw it, not the
eye; and he understood, who, seeing it, exclaimed, "Our friend--in
heaven!" While Adolphus Montier cleaned and polished his French horn,
an occupation which was his unfailing resource, if he could find
nothing else to do, or when he practised his music, business in which
he especially delighted when off duty, it was his pleasure to have wife
and child with him.

Imagination was an active power in the Drummer's sphere. He, away off
in Foray, used to talk about the forms and colors of sounds, as if he
knew about them; and he had not learned the talk in any school. He
would have done no injury to transcendentalism. And he was a happy man,
in that the persons before whom he indulged in this manner of speech
rather encouraged it. Never had his Pauline's pride and fondness failed
Adolphus the Drummer. Life in Foray was little less than banishment,
though it had its wages and--renown; but Pauline made out of this
single man her country, friends, and home. Never woman endeavored with
truer single-heartedness to understand her spouse. In her life's aim
was no failure. Let him expatiate on sound to the bounds of fancy's
extravagance, she could confidently follow, and would have volunteered
her testimony to a doubter, as if all were a question of tangible fact,
to be definitely proved. So in every matter. For all the comfort she
was to the man she loved, for her confidence in him who deserved it,
for her patient endurance of whatsoever ill she met or bore, for
choosing to walk in so peaceful a manner, with a heart so light and a
face so fair, praise to the Drummer's wife!

Elizabeth, the companion of her parents in all their happy rambling and
unambitious home-life, was their joy and pride. If she frolicked in the
grass while her father played his airs, she lost not a strain of the
music. She hearkened also to his deep discourse, and gave good heed,
when he illustrated the meaning of the tunes he loved to play. And
these were rarely the stirring strains with which the Governor's policy
kept the band chiefly busy when the soldiers gathered on summer nights
in knots of listeners, and the ladies of the fort, the Governor's wife,
and the wives of the officers, came out to enjoy the evening, or when a
vessel touched