xt7kkw57ds9c https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7kkw57ds9c/data/mets.xml Visscher, William Lightfoot, 1842-1924. 1908  books b96-8-34456973 English Atwell Printing and Binding Co., : Chicago, Ill. : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Van Leshout, Alexander J., 1868- ill. Fetch over the canoe : a story of a song / by William Lightfoot Visscher. text Fetch over the canoe : a story of a song / by William Lightfoot Visscher. 1908 2002 true xt7kkw57ds9c section xt7kkw57ds9c 










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'Jtetcb Ovr the Canoe

         JI Story of a Song

 By WILLIAM LIGHTFOOT VISSCHER.


     "L'amour et la fumee ne peuvent se cacher."


















             CHICAGO, ILL..
     ATWELL PRINTING AND BINDING CO.
                1908.

 





























       Copyright, 1908,
By William Lightfoot Visscher,
          Chicago.

 
































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    CHAPTER 1.

A BOY'S REBELLION.

 



















          A VOICE.

Not the words of the song you sung,
  Nor the melody they bore,
Though that was low, and soft, and sweet,
  But never in time before,
Has such a tuneful, soulful voice,
  Rung through the echoing halls
Of a memory, where pictures hang,
  That soften the grim old walls.

Sweet girl, that voice could only come
  From a soul that is white and true,
And were I young and handsome now,
  My life would lay siege to you.

 







    I 1,
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L I I L

 This page in the original text is blank.

 


          A BOY'S REBELLION.

          LONG, sweeping bend of the river.
              In Phillip's boyish fancy it seemed,
            sometimes at night, from his little
            window at home, to be the white
            scimetar of the new moon, hugely
            magnified and lying down there glit-
            tering beneath the trees.
              In the daytime, in the summers,
            and particularly in the glorious, bril-
            liant autumns, it was as blue as the
            sky, and the shades on it were as the
            clouds-light and dark.
              At the foot of a series of steps dug
            in the terraces from the garden down
            to the river, the boy's canoe-his dear-
            ly loved canoe-lay on the water,
still against the  bank, or jostling  a little
from the ripples if there was a breeze. At the
bow which was held up stream by a small chain
looped about the trunk of a birch sapling, was
always a crystal spear of water, made by the
current.
  The beautiful canoe had been shaped out of a
clean poplar tree, and it was as graceful as the
neck of a swan.
  "I am in despair," said the boy-man one yester-
day, "at attempting a description of that canoe.
When I try to tell an artist about it, so that he
can make an effort to draw a picture of it, and
add my own crude sketch to give him a suggestion,
I am always distinctly aware of utter failure, and

 


14     FETCH OVER THE CANOE



when he says: 'Oh! I know. Something like this,'
then I become angry. He does not touch it, but
makes something that is a cross between a birch-
bark canoe, a dug-out and a yawl, ofr-anything.
  "Why Oh! why, did I not induce my mother,
who knew it, to make a drawing of that canoe
  "She was an artist when I was a little bit of a
fellow, and before I came to get in her way. But
when I was big enough to own and handle a canoe
so many little brothers and sisters had followed
me into the world that the dear little, winsome,
black-eyed, gypsy-faced woman had neglected her
easel and pallette for us scampering kids, and I
remember now, that her paints dried and hardened,
the easel was in the garret among a lot of other
unused lumber and chattels, the pallette and
brushes were there too, or anywhere and nowhere.
The toggery and toys of the nursery, school-books,
caps, small shoes, sun-bonnets-all sorts of brat's
belongings, had whelmed the implements of art,
and eclipsed the ambition for it.
  "So my mother did not draw a picture of the
canoe, but there is a glorious vision of it hanging
in the halls of blessed memory."
  And poor old "Black Mammy,"-many a time
in early summer mornings Phillip would leave
her standing arms akimbo, in despair and too
much alarmed and indignant to articulate, as he
whizzed by her and down the terrace, in one white
garment, peeling that as he neared the water, then
in puris naturalibus, running the length of the
canoe and tumbling, a pink flash, into the blue
water for a swim to the other shore and back.
  Nearly all boys of that ilk loved a horse.
Phillip's horse was a Glencoe beauty that was
well cared for, but the canoe, possessed of the

 

FETCH OVER THE CANOE



name Chloe Roe, which was also the name of a
pretty girl who lived on the mountain side, was
his pride and boast, nearly his idol. It was his
almost constant companion to the exclusion of all
other persons and things that refused to be with
them and of them.
  And, talk about an Indian handling a canoe-
Phillip's mastery over that craft was more entire
than any other mastery he has ever achieved.
  Big, red apples, strands of black beads, and
hearts and crosses that he had cut from cannel-
coal, would incline the other Chloe toward him,
temporarily but Chloe, the canoe, was ever faith-
ful. No Indian that ever lived could handle a
canoe as he did that one. He could stand on its
"gunnels" and steer it without a paddle, across
or down stream. He could capsize it and right
it without getting wet above the ankles, If he
chose. Often he paddled it miles upon miles, up
and down the river, transported his funnel fish-
traps in it and set them from it, fished from it
and ferried folks. It was a triumph and a glory,
and he delighted to hear some one call from the
opposite bank the peculiar "Who-ee!" that meant
"Fetch over the canoe," for then it was doing a
service that was recognized as being undeniably
good.
  Some of those persons gave the boy, now and
then, a coin for the service. Most of them did not.
Sol many did not that the coin was Invariably a
surprise. Indeed the gift was generally thought
to be almost thrown away, for they knew that he
only hoarded them to be used for the purchase of
books with which he would idle away his time.
  It was true that in the comfortable seat of that
canoe, while tied up under the grateful shade of



15

 


16     FETCH OVER THE CANOE



an over-hanging tree, in a quiet nook, the boy
read many books that were, for the most part,
stories of the sea-the great oceans that he had
not seen yet. He delighted to read thrilling tales
of the ancient buccaneers of the Spanish main; of
how they climbed over the sides of great galleons,
and robbed them of wedges of gold, rich and many-
colored gems, beautiful maidens and treasures of
silk from the looms of the Orient.
  Phillip had never loved gold, nor its equivalents
in any sort of merchandise, and one fair -maiden
at a time has always been enough for him-some-
times too much-and she has generally been at
hand, yet he longed to be one of those same
buccaneers-or his prototype-and do the same
things that they did. Yet he was an honest boy
who had not learned the exact shadings of mine
and thine, as between the Spaniards who robbed
the Peruvians, Aztecs, et al. and those who robbed
them.
  But those books, and the persecutions they
brought, came as near making a pirate of a
canoe-boy as such things have ever done, when
they did not quite do it.
  Phillip's father and mother, who were educated
far beyond their general environment, were glad
to have him read, but they preferred that it should
be along better lines. His brothers who were
inclined in other directions, and who slept in the
same room he did, kept up a war on his lights in
the apartment at night, until he was deprived of
candles, and when he substituted split pine-knots
and nearly baked his adolescent brains while lying
on the floor, head to the fire-place, so that the
blaze from the fat-wood might illuminate the
already warm pages, they renewed their com-

 


FETCH OVER THE CANOE 1



plaints, righteously enough, as he now sees, down
the vista of the years. Then the pine-knots were
also made contraband and were cut out, by orders
from below.
  Then came a quiet rebellion and one day the
canoe was lashed alongside a passing flat-boat
that was bound for New Orleans, and a runaway
boy went to sea to sail many oceans, and to return,
after a few years, having at the last of this ex-
perience gone ashore from a shipwreck, and over
and among the crawling canyons of the deep to
temporary safety on a long stretch of sandy beach
washed by the Caribbean sea.
  Phillip's father had a cousin-a regular old
"sea-dog"-who sailed a pretty brigantine out of
New Orleans to anywhere that it could go. Now
it happened to be in commission to take a cargo
of coopering material to Portugal.
  The father felt sure that Phillip's aim would be
to sail with the skipper cousin, and he wrote to
his kinsman to send the boy back. But the old
sailor wrote that it would be good for the youth
to see something that the "land-lubbers" could not,
and without awaiting a reply-it was before the
days of telegraphing, in that region-he sailed and
thus it was that Phillip went to sea-and to see.
  The tars called the boy "The ship's cousin," and
he was happy.
  Back from Portugal the "Jessie Hall" came
laden with wine. Then, with a miscellaneous
cargo, she sailed for South American ports. At
Montevideo the deck-load of lumber was recon-
signed to Rio Janiero, and before the Jessie had
cleared the wide mouth of the Rio de la Plata the
skipper and first mate were both bed-ridden, and
by the time the northward course had been taken



17

 

18     FETCH OVER THE CANOE



a strenuous gale was making things lively for the
Jessie with her top-heavy deck-load. By orders
from below the deck-load was unshipped and the
brigantine put to sea-the sailor's safest course
at times. Only the skipper and his mate, on
board, knew navigation, though the crew could
put the Jessie where they were told-everything
else being equal.  But the signals of distress
brought help from a Brazilian bark-one of the
sea-truants of that coast-and a pilot from that
craft sailed the Jessie into the port of Rio Grande
de Sul.
  In due time the Jessie reached Rio Janeiro and
eventually sailed for New Orleans, with a cargo
of coffee and other South American products.
  When the brigantine had sailed beyond the
Amazon's mouth, and was about to reach the
Caribbean Sea, between the north-eastern coast
of South America and the long sprangle of the
Windward Islands, a vicious gale struck the Jessie
with ungallant suddenness, and the little tramp
went to "Davy Jones' locker."
  The crew-all hands-for the skipper and his
mate were hale and hearty now-went ashore on
spars and things, and for about ten days this
small party of the disengaged became the enforced
guests of the tanned natives, who gave them
bread-fruit, plantain-a large sort of banana, that
is remarkably good eating, broiled on coals-and
whatever else the island afforded.
  Phillip felt himself to be much a Robinson
Crusoe, though in his soul he resented such a lot
of company, as curtailing the reality of the story.
  Signals finally attracted succor, and the English
ship that took off the Jessie's crew carried them
to Havana, and the skipper's friends in that

 


FETCH OVER THE CANOE



capital of the "Ever Faithful Isle" made all hands
welcome.
  Phillip was happy many weeks with young
persons of his own age, and was a sort of hero
and wonder among them. But the time came when
the skipper, who was a man of large means,
sailed for home, and in due time brought Phillip
safely to the parental hearth.
  All the remainder of this is another story, but
it suits this writer to say, just here, that the return
of Phillip gave barely time, in boyhood, to give
him some preparation, and the first three years of
college life. Then came a dreadful war, and he
left his student ways for four years of the life of
a soldier, which was the open way to a life after-
ward, all over the world and out in its storms, to
the end.
  Moreover, the writer is tempted to tell also, that
during the years at sea, Phillip had surreptitiously
studied navigation, with a view to some time be-
coming the master of "a long, low, rakish craft,"
that should "fly the black flag" and become "the
terror of the seas." The involuntary landing on
one of the little Windward islands, from a spar and
a vastness of rude salt water, gave that ambition
a chill, from  which it never recovered   with
sufficient strength for any strenuous purpose.
  The river, the canoe, the seas, the war, the
world, and something renascent or inherent, for
he came of a long line of poets, painters, sculptors,
sailors and warriors, and on one side from the
Hollanders who, to fight old Spain, then the
greatest war-power on earth, built for themselves
ground amid the sea to fight upon, and on the
other side from that Cavalier stock that settled
the Southern of the United States, and taught



19

 


20     FETCH OVER THE CANOE



their sons chivalry and their daughters the purest
honor-gave this Phillip the poetic instinct. Thus
he wrote verses, from  childhood to age.   The
verses may not have been real poetry. Perhaps
he was unable for extraneous reasons, to write
real poetry, but he was a poet, notwithstanding,
for certain it is, that many a poet has lived and
died that never wrote a line, just as
         ... many a gem of purest ray serene,
         The dark, unfathmoned caves of ocean bear,
         And many a flower is born to blush unseen,
         To waste its fragrance on the desert air."
  In verse, Phillip attempted, all his life, to tell
of those things that were closest to his heart,
when it was prompted by love, or patriotism, or
veneration, or admiration of the sublime, or de-
testation of that which is despicable.
  Verse has ever been his refuge and solace, and
while his Pegasus may have been lame in his
feet, weak in his wings, ungainly in shape, and
altogether slow, he has been the best conveyance
that this Phillip, boy and man, has had for his
dearest treasures of thought.
  For this reason, or unreason, it happened that,
reminiscently, one day, when the shadows of life
had begun to fall toward the East, he wrote a
song of the canoe, with tender memories of Chloe,
the other of his first boyish loves, and whose spirit
still guides the graceful craft over the waters, in
memory and dreams.
  There was truth in the story told by the song,
and it had a tinting of fancy. It was written with
the certain intent of pleasing himself and the
hope that it might please some others. Not any
particular others, but any others. Surely it was
not written to do any harm to any one, including
himself.

 


FETCH OVER THE CANOE



  At any rate it attracted the attention of one
who is an accomplished composer of music and
who set the lines to a sweet and plaintive melody;
a melody that pleased the singers and those that
loved to hear kindly songs.
  One night at a function of an organization of
men whose calling demands the highest order of
intellectuality, a brilliant audience had gathered
and out of the wide anywhere of the vast city,
from somewhere that Phillip had not specially
heard of, led by the composer, came a beautiful
young woman who sang his song. He had never
heard the melody, and while it was very sweet
and tender it was not that which so entranced
him. To him the lines were as humble as they
could possibly have been to the severest critic, or
his most prejudiced enemy. But the melody and
words as borne upon the accents of that voice,
made the sweetest song he had ever heard, and
he has heard the nightingale sing in an orange-
grove, on a night in June, beneath the Southern
cross.
  The voice was as pure as the ring of a golden
bell; the face was that of St. Cecelia; the form
was petite and graceful as a lily; the girl was
winsome, modest, wholesome, with a sweet and
tender smile, and there was an evident yearning to
please; an ambition to do well for the pure and
simple sake of doing good .
  Her success was plainly manifest and she
accepted the proofs of it with a gentle diffidence
that seemed to be tinged with the faintest color
of surprise and the soft light of serene gratificat-
tion, toned by gratefulness.
  By proper means she came to Phillip as to an



2 1

 


22     FETCH OVER THE CANOE



older and most affectionate kinsman. Instantly,
he loved her as that.
  As the evening advanced Phillip's love grew
rapidly and beyond the tone of mere kinship. She
was tenderly caressing in her manner toward
him and childishly nestling. Innocent as a babe
and with the ineffable tenderness of a pure and
unsophisticated girl, she came so near to him that
he wrapped his soul about her as he would have
placed a fleecy garment about the shoulders of his
daughter to protect her from a sudden chill breeze.
  She did not leave his side until he took her
home.
  Phillip was homely, poor and almost old. She
was young, attractive and rich in possiblities.
There was no extenuation of his homeliness, but
his poverty was comparative, for he was not a
pauper, and was splendidly capable of earning.
His age was only years, not senility. He was
strong, healthy, virile. However, he was that
homely, poor and old that he had not the wildest
or most distant thought of attempting to win the
love of so lovely a creature as this. He was entire-
ly obsequious to his discrepancies, notwithstanding
his intense admiration for the girl.
  The day following the function Phillip sent the
young lady a book that she had expressed a wish
to see, and with it a bunch of roses and a box of
bonbons. On a fly-leaf of the book he wrote some
lines, the first expression of tenderness from which
in the two succeding years of hope and despair,
bliss and misery, trust and doubt, satisfaction
and suspense, followed a torrent of love's pleadings,
chidings, assurances, rejoicings and wailings, that
may only come from one who in his fondness is
deeply devoted, sincere, anxious, and entirely in-

 































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FETCH OVER THE CANOE



capable of reserve as to the condition of his
affections.
  There is an ancient proverb that says: "There
is no fool like an old fool." Referring, of course,
to men of years in love. But Stanley Waterloo, a
great writer and one who knows men and women,
under all sorts of circumstances and conditions,
has said in one of his books:
  "He who is not a fool when in love is not a man.
It is only the half-hearted or the foxy creature
who, when in love, retains all his senses."
  To endorse this was natural to the subject under
consideration, and distinctly comforting.
  If at any time in the life of this man, Phillip,
he has been capable of saying great and beautiful
things, the inspiration of the wondrous love that
afterward took possession of him for this girl,
produced them. Besides the letters that he wrote
her, and that she never would part with, because,
she declared, they were so eloquent and rich in
sentiment, he wrote for her many earnest and
truthful tributes and pleadings in verse, some of
which have been made the groundwork of this
history.
  I submit that not every young fool, no matter
how irretrievably and sincerely in love, could have
written them, and none shall escape with the
assertion that he would not have written them,
for nearly every individual of that correlation
would give much if he could have written them.
  No one knew this more certainly than the
stricken writer of the verses, and he admitted the
fact with a freedom that was not egotism, but
courageous candor.
  The offering of the book, the lines, the flowers,
and confections, brought a delicious note, prettliy



23

 

24     FETCH OVER THE CANOE



couched, dainty in chirography and stationery,
and there was something in its tone that gave to
the man, old and homely as he was, a thrill of
hope that he almost resented, for that thrill also
hinted to his consciousness that he was one of
those same old fools that the proverb exploits so
flippantly.
  After all, however, he knew that he was in love
with this adorable creature and pardoned himself,
saying, "How could it be otherwise" and "What
human man could see her and not love her"
  By this latter conviction and its acknowledg-
ment, he had begun, thus early, to construct
misery for himself, even in the laying out of a
paradise.
  Withal, he would not admit to himself, then,
that he was in love.
  Strange contradiction-he was trying to fool
himself, and in this to hinder his right hand from
knowing what his left hand was doing, and vice
versa. He told himself that there was nothing
more serious in the affair than a disinterested
intention to be the best friend that this sweet girl
ever had.
  That note brought also to Phillip an invitation
to call on the young lady at her home, and he
went, taking more books, flowers and confections,
and they talked of poetry and art generally, for
she was a brilliant musician and highly artistic
in all her instincts.
  A friend of us all, who had lately written
another book-he does that frequently-George
Horton does-has said in the latest one:
  "A man of artistic temperament will talk as far
over the head of a beautiful woman as the stars

 

FETCH OVER THE CANOE



are above the heads of potato blossoms; it is one
of the highest tributes to beauty."
  How much more should this man Phillip have
been led to say the very best things that his
artistic temperament could suggest in talking
with this girl, when he not only had beauty of
form and feature here, but beauty of soul, tinted
with all the most delicate colors of art, and
traceries of purity, for inspiratimn
  The friendship of this girl and man-putting
the situation as delicately as it should be with
such short acquaintance-ripened so that night
that he promised to write for her a poem that
should be "her very own" as to its direction, and
she consented that he might be as expressive
therein as he should choose to be, as to his interest
in her.
  She had read a book of Phillip's verses and she
flattered him with words of admiration for it.
  In the same book of Horton's from which the
previous quotation is made, he says:
  "The older a man gets the more he idealizes the
women who admire him. He never becomes a
cynic enough in his sere and yellow years to pick
flaws in the fair hands that bring him back his
youth, as they might the roses of a by-gone
summer.
  Upon Phillip's next visit-and there had not
enough of time elapsed to injure in the minutest
way the machinery of the most delicate clock
that has ever been fashioned-he took with him as
the poem that should be "her very own," the verses
in this brochure entitled "A Palace for the Queen."



25

 


FETCH OVER THE CANOE



          A PALACE FOR THE QUEEN.

I have built you a beautiful palace, my queen.
Where the blue skies are toned through a golden sheen;
Its towers and minarets gleam in the sun,
And the days are ail blended in one-only one
A long, blissful day, where never shall cease
The morning of life, and Love's passion-and peace.

I have built you a beautiful palace, my dear,
And a deep, wide river, that's placid and clear,
Glides ceaselessly by, 'twixt its bloom-broidered
    shores,
Where a light pinnace plies, under music-timed oars,
Whose beats are the heart-beats, for you, in my breast;
The ever, forever, of love's sweet unrest.

I have built you a beautiful palace, my love,
My queen and my sweetheart, my tigress and dove;
It stands 'mid the meadows and woods of my heart,
And this, with my life and its hopes, are the part
God gave unto me, and I give it to you,
Bright sun of my soul, ever shining and true.

In the palace I've built you, my bright-eyed queen,
Are fountains that spray in the midst of the green
Of tropical plants, and elsewhere never grew
Such flowers as grow in the gardens for you;
Here music and love, true art and sweet bloom,
Shall compass my queen in their light and perfume.



26

 















CHAPTER 11.

HAIDEE.

 



















        ALONG THE WAY.

Along Life's highway I shall stroll,
  And sing my song right cheerily,
For health of heart and Joy of soul,
  That all the world goes merrily.
I'll revel In the woods and fields,
Beside sweet Nature's mystery,
And live to love, and love to live,
  Amid God's moving history.

I'll eat and drink, and work and sleep,
Court Peace and banish Sorrow,
Till long processions of the years
  Shall bring me Life's tomorrow.
Nor shall the years bring age to me,
  For Love shall keep me soulfully;
I'll learn no threnody to sing,
  Nor aught to mumble dolefully.

  This page in the original text is blank.

 


                HAIDEE.

          OU write pretty stories," the girl said
          to Phillip one evening. "Please write
          one that I may think you wrote for
          me."
             The delighted man replied earnest-
           ly: "Had I the gifts of Shakespeare,
           Scott, Poe, Kipling, Tarkington, and
           all the others of the best, blended, I
           could not write the story that I
           would for you. But I will do the
           best I can. No man does more."
              "You do everything to make me
            happy," she said. "You are always
            good to me. Oh! what can I do for
  A you"
              "Love me, if you think it possible.
Sing for me. I would not have you do more.
There is no more," quoth the man.
  "Perhaps I shall love you," said the girl. "I
believe I will. I am sure of it. But I wish to
make assurance doubly sure for your sake. That
is almost love-is it not"
  "Yes."
  "Now I will sing."
  With the nameless grace that was always hers;
a charming manner of unstudied, easy and yet
modest abandon; the movement, step and turn of
a girl, and yet, withal, the motion and poise of a
gentle queen, she seated herself at the piano and
sung Cathrine Glen's "Absent."

 

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  "Oh! if she might love me," came to the lips
of that man's soul, and then the words:

               "DAS IST GENUG."
       When one who sings with Heaven's gift,
         Of voice that's sweet and true,
       And that one sings with heart and soul
         Inspired by love of you,
       Then are you blest, and truly have
         More than one mortal's due.

  To Phillip, when he left her at the hall door that
night, she gave a timid kiss, and her last words
were:
  "I think I shall."
  He was afraid she would, and yet he would have
given his life-almost his hope of heaven-could
he have known that she loved him. And he was
as unselfish In it all as a fond mother is with her
babe.
  He was afraid for her.
  No sleep came to Phillip's eyes that night until
sundry sheets of paper on his desk bore the story
that follows:


            "HAIDEE," The Story.

  A sign of something sweet and gentle, at a
spot on the shore where a little cove indented the
bluffs of Puget Sound, on the south side of Orcas
Island, attracted my attention and I rounded the
boat toward it.
  In a few minutes the bow crunched the sand of
a short, white beach, and the skiff was safe
aground. Twenty steps took me to a trail that
wound up the rocky bluffs.
  Fifty feet above the water level, in the primeval

  This page in the original text is blank.

 


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Iforest, was a grassy, open space of a few rods
square, and at the inland side of this was a lone
grave.
  The hour was in the early evening of a gold-
bright, moonlit night in June. The lofty firs of
the forest whispered together at their exalted and
shaggy tops, and far above the silent stars kept
watch.
  I knelt at the headstone which was only a
rugged, native rock, but deep and beautifully upon
the rough ashlar had been cut, as by the hand
of intense love and pure art, the one word:
"HAIDEE."
  The letters were strong and graceful and about
them on the surface that had been chiseled flat,
to give space to the stone flowers, was carved
a wreath of roses and pansies.
  The little wave of earth that formed the grave
was beside a rock that was almost square, and in
this rock was a natural seat, upon which lay brown
fronds of pine and fern.
  In the deep silence my quick ear caught faint
sounds of approaching footsteps that fell slowly.
  Stealthily as possible I stepped aside and took
station behind a huge cedar, of which grand tree
a few were scattered amid the forest growth.
  A man came. He was old but strong and
straight. Indeed there was in his appearance and
bearing contradictions of vigorous manhood and
patriarchal age. His step was that of an Ingomar;
his head and beard were like Lear.
  He approached the grave as a mother would the
cradle of her sleeping infant; he knelt at the
headstone, placed his arms about it and kissed
the name engraven upon it.



33

 


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  "Haidee! " he said, and there were tears In his
big, musical voice. "Haidee, you were all there
was to me this side of God. You were my universe,
my love, my hope, my passion, my friends, all
music, all art, all in all, and the beautiful world
was more beautiful because of you.
  "What can I do, honey Oh! what can I do for
you
  "I would have conquered all things for your
sake. I would have gone forth into the world and
worked wonders to have exalted you, and yet you
wished to be alone with me in the wilderness.
  "How strange! How good of you, Sweet Haidee,
to love me so! "
  He arose, looking more than ever both Ingomar
and Lear, and walked away to the edge of the
bluff, where for some minutes he stood with folded
arms, looking out upon the glorious inland sea.
  The moon's path of shimmering light upon the
waters led far away, and toward another shadowy
island, and as the old man stood he seemed to be
expecting that his lost Haidee would come to him
along the wimpling path.
  Then he came back to the grave and reaching
into a receptacle underneath the side of the rock
next to the little mound, he took out a box and
from that a violin and bow. Then he sat upon the
frond-cushioned seat and played such music as I
had not dreamed could come from an instrument
of human make.
  Perhaps the