A Cathedral Singer

was spread. There is a victory which human nature in thousands of lives daily wins over want, that though it cannot drive poverty from the scene, it can hide its desolation by the ge

p was softened by a too costly silk shade. Over the rim of a common vase hung a few daffodils, too costly daffodils. The supper, frugal to a bargain, tempted the eye and the appetite by the good sen

hord of Bach. The fingers that pressed them were unmistakably those of a child. As the hands wandered up and down the keyboard, the ear now and then took notice of a broken string. There were many of these broken strings. The instrument plainly announ

an inner room farther away, possibly a person who might just have passed from a kitchen to a bedroom to ma

here's another key silent. There

he voice at the piano sounded again, this time ve

e, we won't kick the old one do

a chance, being a very honored ancestor and not by any means dead in some reg

ngry. Aren't yo

could no

ting on the

y was no

bring you a daffodil t

tied his ancient lungs of some further moribund intimati

ok any nicer! I'

mash on the keys, a joyous smash, and a m

around her waist, one of hers enfolded him about the neck an

d newsboy, having laid aside the masks of the day which so often in New York persons find it necessary to wear,-- the tragic mask, the comic mask, the callous, coarse, brutal mask

onsibilities. Her utmost wish was that in years to come, when he should look back upon his childhood, he would always remember with pride his evenings with his mother. During the day he must see her drudge, and many a picture of herself on a plane of life below her own she knew to be fastened to his growing brain; but as nearly as possible blotting t

fter years when he was to gaze backward across a long distance, he must be made to realize that when he was a little fellow, it was his mother who first had seen his star while it was still low on the horizon;

nickerbockers. Under his broad sailor collar she herself had tied a big, soft, flowing black ribbon of the finest silk. Above this rose the solid head looking like a sphere on a column of triumph, with its lustrous bronzed hair, which, as she br

the art school. With some unsold papers under his arm he had walked with her to the entrance, a new pang in his breast about her that he did not unders

r, by way of

ng if she could know that he had gone across the cathedral grounds and then across the park as along a country road bordered with young grass and shrubs in bloom and forest trees in ear

ring past her, had caught sight of the walls inside thickly hung with portraits of men and women in ric

, no less true, she described. With deft fingers she went over the somberly woven web of the hours, and plucking here a bright thread and there a brigh

word for her to come up, he himself had come down. As he led the way past the confusing halls and studios, he had looked back over his shoulder just a little, to let her know that not for a moment did he lose thought of her. To have walked in front of her, looking straight ahead, might have meant that he esteemed her a person of no consequence. A master so walks before a servant, a superior before an inferior. Out of respect for her, he had even lessened the natural noisiness of

em, while they worked, such beautiful expressions rested on their faces. Unconsciously their natures had opened like young flowers, and as at the hearts of young flowers there is for each a clear drop o

nd she could look out at the sky: sometimes the loveliest clouds drifted over, and sometimes the dearest little bird flew past, no doubt on its way to the park. Last, but not least, she had not been crowded. In New York it was almost impossible to secure a good seat in a public place without being nudged or bumped or crowded. But that had actually happened to her. She had had a delightful c

tion. Now as she finished and looked across the table at the picture of him under the lamplight, she was rewarded, she was content; while he ate his pl

ctly splendid ti

ghed to

g been most in her consciousness-"now, then, tell

thing more to eat,-and he folded his hands quite like the head

round to the choir school, but no one was there that morning, not a sound came from the inside. Then he had started down across the park. As he sat down to count his money, a man who had climbed up the hillside stopped and asked him a great ma

fair, right and wrong, which make up for each of us the history of our checkered human day. It separated life as a swimmer sep

incident, forgetting the rest: a passing stranger, hearing a few notes of his voice, had stopped to question h

at she believed he would some day be. She might be wrong, and thus might start him on the wrong course; or, being right, she might never have

ad kindled within her that night what she herself had long tended unlit-the al

. No matter how poor the spot, if there reach it some solitary ray of the great light of the world, let it be called your dr

est, oldest imaginable of six-octave pianos, the mythical piano ancestor; on it were piled some yellowed folios, her music once.

ds. She liked him to fall asleep on one or the other of these mountain-tops. When he awoke, it would be as from a mountain that he

o call it, and she was reading to him. A knock interrupted her

ning her eyes toward the door,

uneasiness attacked her: perhaps this unwelcome visit bore upon her engagement at the studio. They might not wish her to return; that little door to a

e janitor with a

ask him to

e a deliberate good walker. He reached her floor. He approached her door and she stepped out to confront him. A gentleman stood before her with an unmistakable air of feeling himself happy in his mission. For

le?" he asked with ap

teppe

iscourteously she partly closed the door and waited for him to withdraw. But he was n

ce, Madam. I teach certain kinds of music. I took the liberty of asking the owner of the voice where he lived, an

estiny for her. Instead of vanishing, he had reappeared, following up his discovery into her very presence. She did not desir

smiling quietly as with awkward self-recovery, "that I am

radually turned, showing everything in its actual relation to everything else. In truth a shaft as of celestial light suddenly fell upon her doorway; a far-sent radian

up into hers; his mother must be the first to congratulate him and to catch from his eyes their

threw ope

you co

lcome, a splendor of

aightway the purpose of

d him to-morrow and

rect with firm responsible hand the he

inued the music- master, though with delicate hesitancy, "

n brought up so much of the past, such t

is free. He is

s pupil, who, upon the discovery of the visitor's i

ishing to make the first advance toward po

iled at her awe-stricken son

ly strengthened by this revelation of his fright. "He is overw

choir-master persisted in

red uneasily

he said all

knew how boys got into the school! He had betrayed his habit of idly hanging about the old building where the choir practised and of singing with them to show what he could do and would do if he had t

ow opened before him: he was to be taken into the choir, he was to sing in the cathedral

ome true; his dream was a reality: he was to begin to learn music, he was to go where it was being taught. And the master who was to take him by the

. The man smiling there was sternly going to draw out of him what was in him. He was goi

preparedness and fighting capacity of the streets gone out of his mind

the children of genius. For throughout the region of art, as in the world of the physical, nature brings for

?" the choir-master

barely, as though the

ng past his bedtime, and she waited for him to come from the bedroom and say good night. Presently

er tightly, "and now on the other side

when the time came-the time for her to be pushed aside, to drop out. These last moments of every n

arting with the forehead, and being very particular when he got to the long eyelashes, then coming down past the nose. They were very silly and merry ab

doesn't li

d the idea

e wouldn't

he will t

you'd never want to see

her heart and rocked

ed in all the world," she said, hold

greenhouse and a carriage and horses and a new

g! More than anyth

ed to the

't want ever to see me any more. And then nobody will

gain to herself an

r! My minstr

said, with his arms around her neck f

ide and stood looking at him after slumber had c

murmured. "My guest from

the luxuries of consciousness; she must tread the roomy spaces of reflection and be soothed in their larg

park, it offers to speeding vehicles the illusive freedom of a country road. Across the street at the foot of the park a few lights gleamed scant amid the April foliage. She began at the foot

ence to look on and laugh, to laugh pitilessly at every human thing. She had held on to her faith because she must hold on to something, and she had nothing else. Now as she stood there, following the winding night road ove

thrown himself into her arms and told her that he was accepted.

speak to her when the pupil was not present. He was guarded

ng we cannot foretell,-but I believe it will be a great voice in th

with emotion. She was as d

e said. "It is a great voice a

et him in readiness. She reflected that he could not make his first appearance at the c

al changes followed as follow they must and his voice broke later on, and then came again or never came again, whatever afterward befell, behind would be the memories of his childhood. And when he had grown to full manhood,

rite spot, at her windows; and it was her favor

folk of older lands and ages named the days of the ice saints. They really fall in May, but this had been like one of them. So raw a

out and looking up toward a sc

First it crossed the street to the edge of the park, then crossed the wet grass at the foot of the slope; then it passed upward over

s of the island, but to be risen out of infinite space and to be based and to abide on the eternity of l

that hour, she stood on the pi

forward, she pressed her face against the window-pane and peered over and watched the group of them. Sometimes she could see them and sometimes not as they struggled from one side of the street to the other. No one, whether younger or older, stronger or weaker, was ever

imself, and the great mass of tons in weight responded to his guidance as if it possessed intelligence, as if it entered into his foresight and caution: it became to her, as she watched it, almost conscious, almost human. She thought of i

en been hard and bitter; that many a time she had found pleasure in setting the empty cup of he

king the curb and lamp-post; and then, righting itself, it came on with a rush-a mindless destroyer. Now on one side of the street, now in the middle, now on the other side; g

lean out and cry down to him, to wave her hands to him with warning as she had often done with joy. She could not raise the sashes. She had not the strength left to turn the rusty bolts. Nor was there time. She looked again; she saw what was going to happen. Then with frenzy she began to beat against the window-sashes and to moan and try to stifle her own moans. And then shrill startled screams and piteous cries came up to her, and crazed now and no longer knowing what she did, she struck the