The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cruel Barbara Allen, by David Christie Murray

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Title: Cruel Barbara Allen
From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.)

Author: David Christie Murray

Release Date: August 1, 2007 [EBook #22208]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRUEL BARBARA ALLEN ***

Produced by David Widger

CRUEL BARBARA ALLEN.

By David Christie Murray

From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories
By David Christie Murray
In Three Volumes Vol. II.

Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly 1882

CHAPTER I.

Christopher was a fiddler and a man of genius. Educated people do not
deny the possibility of such a combination; but it was Christopher's
misfortune to live amongst a dull and bovine-seeming race, who had
little sympathy with art and no knowledge of an artist's longings.
They contented themselves, for the most part, with the belief that
Christopher was queer. Perhaps he was. My experience of men of genius,
limited as it may be, points to the fact that oddity is a characteristic
of the race. This observation is especially true of such of them as are
yet unrecognised. They wear curious garments and their ways are strange.
The outward and visible signs of their inward and spiritual graces are
familiar to most observers of life, and the aesthetic soul recognises
the meaning of their adornments of the hair and their puttings on
of apparel. Genius may be said in these cases to be a sort of mental
measles exhibited in sartorial form, and it may be supposed that but
for their breaking out there would be some fear of their proving fatal.
There are reasons for all things, if we could but find them; yet where
is the social philosopher who will establish the nexus between a passion
for Beethoven and the love of a bad hat? Why should a man who has
perceptions of the beautiful fear the barber's shears? There were no
social philosophers to speak of in the little country town in which
Christopher was born and bred, and nobody in his case strove to solve
these problems. Christopher was established as queer, and his townsfolk
were disposed to let him rest at that. His pale face was re