On one of the dim walls of Christ Church, in Lexington, Kentucky, there
hangs, framed in thin black wood, an old rectangular slab of marble. A
legend sets forth that the tablet is in memory of the Reverend James
Moore, first minister of Christ Church and President of Transylvania
University, who departed this life in the year 1814, at the age of
forty-nine. Just beneath runs the record that he was learned, liberal,
amiable, and pious.
Save this concise but not unsatisfactory summary, little is now known
touching the reverend gentleman. A search through other sources of
information does, indeed, result in reclaiming certain facts. Thus,
it appears that he was a Virginian, and that he came to Lexington in
the year 1792--when Kentucky ceased to be a county of Virginia, and
became a State. At first he was a candidate for the ministry of the
Presbyterian Church; but the Transylvania Presbytery having reproved
him for the liberality of his sermons, James kicked against such rigor
in his brethren, and turned for refuge to the bosom of the Episcopal
Communion. But this body did not offer much of a bosom to take refuge
in.
Virginia Episcopalians there were in and around the little wooden
town; but so rampant was the spirit of the French Revolution and the
influence of French infidelity that a celebrated local historian, who
knew thoroughly the society of the place, though writing of it long
afterwards, declared that about the last thing it would have been
thought possible to establish there was an Episcopal church.
"Not so," thought James. He beat the canebrakes and scoured the buffalo
trails for his Virginia Episcopalians, huddled them into a dilapidated
little frame house on the site of the present building, and there
fired so deadly a volley of sermons at the sinners free of charge that
they all became living Christians. Indeed, he fired so long and so
well that, several years later--under favor of Heaven and through the
success of a lottery with a one-thousand-dollar prize and nine hundred
and seventy-four blanks--there was built and furnished a small brick
church, over which he was regularly called to officiate twice a month,
at a salary of two hundred dollars a year.
Here authentic history ends, except for the additional fact that in the
university he sat in the chair of logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy,
and belles-lettres--a large chair to sit in with ill-matched legs and
most uncertain bottom. Another authority is careful to state that he
had a singularly sweet breath and beautiful manners. Thus it has
been well with the parson as respects his posthumous fame; for how many
of our fellow-creatures are learned without being amiable, amiable
without being pious, and pious without having beautiful manners!
[Illustration: "HE HAD BEAUTIFUL MANNERS."]
And yet the best that may be related of him is not told in the books;
and it is only when we have allowed the dust to settle once more upon
the histories, and have peered deep into the mists of oral tradition,
that the parson is discovered standing there in spirit and the flesh,
but muffled and ghost-like, as a figure seen through a dense fog.
A tall, thinnish man, with silky pale-brown hair, worn long and put
back behind his ears, the high tops of which bent forward a little
under the weight, and thus took on the most remarkable air of paying
incessant attention to everybody and everything; set far out in front
of these ears, as though it did not wish to be disturbed by what was
heard, a white, wind-splitting face, calm, beardless, and seeming never
to have been cold, or to have dropped the kindly dew of perspiration;
under the serene peak of this forehead a pair of large gray eyes,
patient and dreamy, being habitually turned inward upon a mind toiling
with hard abstractions; having within him a conscience burning always
like a planet; a bachelor--being a logician; therefore sweet-tempered,
never having sipped the sour cup of experience; gazing covertly at
womankind from behind the delicate veil of unfamiliarity that lends
enchantment; being a bachelor and a bookworm, therefore already old at
forty, and a little run down in his toilets, a little frayed out at the
elbows and the knees, a little seamy along the back, a little deficient
at the heels; in pocket poor always, and always the poorer because of
a spendthrift habit in the matter of secret chanties; kneeling down
by his small hard bed every morning and praying that during the day
his logical faculty might discharge its function morally, and that his
moral faculty might discharge its function logically, and that over all
the operations of all his other faculties he might find heavenly grace
to exercise both a logical and a moral control; at night kneeling down
again to ask forgiveness that, despite his prayer of the morning, one
or more of these same faculties--he knew and called them all familiarly
by name, being a metaphysician--had gone wrong in a manner the most
abnormal, shameless, and unforeseen; thus, on the whole, a man shy
and dry; gentle, lovable; timid, resolute; forgetful, remorseful;
eccentric, impulsive, thinking too well of every human creature but
himself; an illogical logician, an erring moralist, a wool-gathered
philosopher, but, humanly speaking, almost a perfect man.
But the magic flute? Ah, yes! The magic flute!
Well, the parson had a flute--a little one--and the older he grew, and
the more patient and dreamy his gray eyes, always the more and more
devotedly he blew this little friend. How the fond soul must have loved
it! They say that during his last days as he lay propped high on white
pillows, once, in a moment of wandering consciousness, he stretched
forth his hand and in fancy lifting it from the white counterpane,
carried it gently to his lips. Then, as his long, delicate fingers
traced out the spirit ditties of no tone and his mouth pursed itself in
the fashion of one who is softly blowing, his whole face was overspread
with a halo of ecstatic peace.
And yet, for all the love he bore it, the parson was never known to
blow his flute between the hours of sunrise and sunset--that is, never
but once. Alas, that memorable day! But when the night fell and he came
home--home to the two-story log-house of the widow Spurlock; when the
widow had given him his supper of coffee sweetened with brown sugar,
hot johnny-cake, with perhaps a cold joint of venison and cabbage
pickle; when he had taken from the supper table, by her permission, the
solitary tallow dip in its little brass candlestick, and climbed the
rude steep stairs to his room above; when he had pulled the leathern
string that lifted the latch, entered, shut the door behind him on
the world, placed the candle on a little deal table covered with
text-books and sermons, and seated himself beside it in a rush-bottomed
chair--then--He began to play? No; then there was dead silence.
For about half an hour this silence continued. The widow Spurlock used
to say that the parson was giving his supper time to settle; but, alas!
it must have settled almost immediately, so heavy was the johnny-cake.
Howbeit, at the close of such an interval, any one standing at the
foot of the steps below, or listening beneath the window on the street
outside, would have heard the silence broken.
At first the parson blew low, peculiar notes, such as a kind and
faithful shepherd might blow at nightfall as an invitation for his
scattered wandering sheep to gather home about him. Perhaps it was a
way he had of calling in the disordered flock of his faculties--some
weary, some wounded, some torn by thorns, some with their fleeces,
which had been washed white in the morning prayer, now bearing many
a stain. But when they had all answered, as it were, to this musical
roll-call, and had taken their due places within the fold of his
brain, obedient, attentive, however weary, however suffering, then the
flute was laid aside, and once more there fell upon the room intense
stillness; the poor student had entered upon his long nightly labors.
Hours passed. Not a sound was to be heard but the rustle of book
leaves, now rapidly, now slowly turned, or the stewing of sap in the
end of a log on the hearth, or the faint drumming of fingers on the
table--those long fingers, the tips of which seemed not so full of
particles of blood as of notes of music, circulating impatiently back
and forth from his heart. At length, as midnight drew near, and the
candle began to sputter in the socket, the parson closed the last book
with a decisive snap, drew a deep breath, buried his face in his hands
for a moment, as if asking a silent blessing on the day's work, and
then, reaching for his flute, squared himself before the dying embers,
and began in truth to play. This was the one brief, pure pleasure he
allowed himself.
It was not a musical roll-call that he now blew, but a dismissal
for the night. One might say that he was playing the cradle song of
his mind. And what a cradle song it was! A succession of undertone,
silver-clear, simple melodies; apparently one for each faculty, as
though he was having something kind to say to them all; thanking some
for the manner in which they had served him during the day, the music
here being brave and spirited; sympathizing with others that had been
unjustly or too rudely put upon, the music here being plaintive and
soothing; and finally granting his pardon to any such as had not used
him quite fairly, the music here having a searching, troubled quality,
though ending in the faintest breath of love and peace.
It was not known whence the parson had these melodies; but come whence
they might, they were airs of heavenly sweetness, and as he played
them, one by one his faculties seemed to fall asleep like quieted
children. His long, out-stretched legs relaxed their tension, his feet
fell over sidewise on the hearth-stone, his eyes closed, his head
sank towards his shoulder. Still, he managed to hold on to his flute,
faintly puffing a few notes at greater intervals, until at last, by the
dropping of the flute from his hands or the sudden rolling of his big
head backward, he would awaken with a violent jerk. The next minute he
would be asleep in bed, with one ear out on guard, listening for the
first sound that should awake him in the morning.
Such having been the parson's fixed habit as long as any one had known
him, it is hard to believe that five years before his death he abruptly
ceased to play his flute and never touched it again. But from this
point the narrative becomes so mysterious that it were better to have
the testimony of witnesses.