Now began an era of infinite happiness, of days that were never long
enough, of evenings when bedtime came all too soon. Oh that there had
been some good angel who would have taken in hand Anthony Croft the
boy, and, training the powers that pointed so unmistakably in certain
directions, given to the world the genius of Anthony Croft, potential
instrument maker to the court of St. Cecilia; for it was not only that
he had the fingers of a wizard; his ear caught the faintest breath of
harmony or hint of discord, as
“Fairy folk a-listening
Hear the seed sprout in the spring,
And for music to their dance
Hear the hedge-rows wake from trance;
Sap that trembles into buds
Sending little rhythmic floods
Of fairy sound in fairy ears.
Thus all beauty that appears
Has birth as sound to finer sense
And lighter-clad intelligence.”
As the universe is all mechanism to one man, all form and color to
another, so to Anthony Croft the world was all melody. Notwithstanding
all these gifts and possibilities, the doctor's wife advised the Widow
Croft to make a plumber of him, intimating delicately that these freaks
of nature, while playing no apparent part in the divine economy, could
sometimes be made self-supporting.
The seventeenth year of his life marked a definite epoch in his
development. He studied Jacob Friedheim's treatise until he knew
the characteristics of all the great violin models, from the Amatis,
Hieronymus, Antonius, and Nicolas, to those of Stradivarius, Guarnerius,
and Steiner.
It was in this year, also, that he made a very precious discovery. While
browsing in the rubbish in Squire Bean's garret to see if he could find
the missing sound-post of the old violin, he came upon a billet of wood
wrapped in cloth and paper. When unwrapped, it was plainly labeled “Wood
from the Bean Maple at Pleasant Point; the biggest maple in York County,
and believed to be one of the biggest in the State of Maine.” Anthony
found that the oldest inhabitant of Pleasant River remembered the stump
of the tree, and that the boys used to jump over it and admire
its proportions whenever they went fishing at the Point. The wood,
therefore, was perhaps eighty or ninety years old. The squire agreed
willingly that it should be used to mend the old violin, and told Tony
he should have what was left for himself. When, by careful calculation,
he found that the remainder would make a whole violin, he laid it
reverently away for another twenty years, so that he should be sure it
had completed its century of patient waiting for service, and falling on
his knees by his bedside said, “I thank Thee, Heavenly Father, for
this precious gift, and I promise from this moment to gather the most
beautiful wood I can find, and lay it by where it can be used some time
to make perfect violins, so that if any creature as poor and helpless as
I am needs the wherewithal to do good work, I shall have helped him as
Thou hast helped me.” And according to his promise so he did, and the
pieces of richly curled maple, of sycamore, and of spruce began to
accumulate. They were cut from the sunny side of the trees, in just
the right season of the year, split so as to have a full inch thickness
towards the bark, and a quarter inch towards the heart. They were then
laid for weeks under one of the falls in Wine Brook, where the musical
tinkle, tinkle of the stream fell on the wood already wrought upon by
years of sunshine and choruses of singing birds.
This boy, toiling not alone for himself, but with full and conscious
purpose for posterity also, was he not worthy to wear the mantle of
Antonius Stradivarius?
“That plain white-aproned man who stood at work Patient and accurate
full fourscore years, Cherished his sight and touch by temperance,
And since keen sense is love of perfectness, Made perfect violins, the
needed paths For inspiration and high mastery.”
And as if the year were not full enough of glory, the school-teacher
sent him a book with a wonderful poem in it.
That summer's teaching had been the freak of a college student, who had
gone back to his senior year strengthened by his experience of village
life. Anthony Croft, who was only three or four years his junior, had
been his favorite pupil and companion.
“How does Tony get along?” asked the Widow Croft when the teacher came
to call.
“Tony? Oh, I can't teach him anything.”
Tears sprang to the mother's eyes.
“I know he ain't much on book learning,” she said apologetically, “but
I'm bound he don't make you no trouble in deportment.”
“I mean,” said the school-teacher gravely, “that I can show him how to
read a little Latin and do a little geometry, but he knows as much in
one day as I shall ever know in a year.”
Tony crouched by the old fireplace in the winter evenings, dropping his
knife or his compasses a moment to read aloud to his mother, who sat in
the opposite corner knitting:--
“Of old Antonio Stradivari,--him
Who a good quarter century and a half ago
Put his true work in the brown instrument,
And by the nice adjustment of its frame
Gave it responsive life, continuous
With the master's finger-tips, and perfected
Like them by delicate rectitude of use.”
The mother listened with painful intentness. “I like the sound of it,”
she said, “but I can't hardly say I take in the full sense.”
“Why mother,” said the lad, in a rare moment of self-expression, “you
know the poetry says he cherished his sight and touch by temperance;
that an idiot might see a straggling line and be content, but he had
an eye that winced at false work, and loved the true. When it says his
finger-tips were perfected by delicate rectitude of use, I think it
means doing everything as it is done in heaven, and that anybody
who wants to make a perfect violin must keep his eye open to all the
beautiful things God has made, and his ear open to all the music he has
put into the world, and then never let his hands touch a piece of work
that is crooked or straggling or false, till, after years and years of
rightness, they are fit to make a violin like the squire's, a violin
that can say everything, a violin that an angel wouldn't be ashamed to
play on.”
Do these words seem likely ones to fall from the lips of a lad who had
been at the tail of his class ever since his primer days? Well,
Anthony was seventeen now, and he was “educated,” in spite of sorry
recitations,--educated, the Lord knows how! Yes, in point of fact the
Lord does know how! He knows how the drill and pressure of the daily
task, still more the presence of the high ideal, the inspiration working
from within, how these educate us.
The blind Anthony Croft sitting in the kitchen doorway had seemingly
missed the heights of life he might have trod, and had walked his close
on fifty years through level meadows of mediocrity, a witch in every
finger-tip waiting to be set to work, head among the clouds, feet
stumbling, eyes and ears open to hear God's secret thought; seeing and
hearing it, too, but lacking force to speak it forth again; for while
imperious genius surmounts all obstacles, brushes laws and formulas from
its horizon, and with its own free soul sees its “path and the outlets
of the sky,” potential genius forever needs an angel of deliverance to
set it free.
Poor Anthony Croft, or blessed Anthony Croft, I know not which,--God
knows! Poor he certainly was, yet blessed after all. “One thing I do,”
said Paul. “One thing I do,” said Anthony. He was not able to realize
his ideals, but he had the “angel aim” by which he idealized his reals.
O waiting heart of God! how soon would thy kingdom come if we all did
our allotted tasks, humble or splendid, in this consecrated fashion!