“I closed my eyes on garnished rooms
To dream of meadows and clover blooms,”
but while I dreamed, I was serenaded by a band of mosquitoes and this is
the song they sang above my pillow:
“Buz-z-z! buz-z-z! no bars around this bed,
Buz-z-z! buz-z-z! no hair upon this head, mosquitoes,
Buz-z-z! buz-z-z! we’ll paint old baldy red,
There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night!”
There are heavens all around us with beautiful gates ajar. I have seen a
June morning unbar a gate of roses and come forth from her palace in the
sky bearing in her girdle of light the keys to a thousand heavens. I
have seen her kindle a sun in every dewdrop and touch the waking hills
with glory. I caught the odor of honeysuckles and the note of a lark as
it rose exultant from the meadow. There were the glimmer of painted
wings among the clover blossoms and the hum of teeming bees rich with
the spoils of plundered beauty. There were the green trail of a winding
river and the low music of its joyous waters dashing among the rocks of
distant rapids. I heard the shouts and splashes of noisy boys down at
the old swimming hole under the spreading elms. An old time darky went
shambling by, with his cup of bait and his fishing pole. The wine of
June was in his veins and he tangled his song with the honey song of the
bees:
“O, my Hannah, lady,
I do a-love-a you!
They ain’t no baby
So good and true!
In Louisiana I could die,
If you wuz only nigh!
O, tell me, Hannah, lady,
Whose black-a-baby is a-you?”
And he cut the pigeon wing in the clover and then sat down on a
bumble-bee. It invited him to rise, and he rose; and it was difficult
for the old man to tell which was the warmer—the June in his heart or
the June in the bumble-bee.
[Illustration:
He cut the pigeon wing in the clover.
]
[Illustration:
The convict’s plea for pardon.
]
A lovesick lad met his sweetheart down in the shady lane and poured out
his soul to her under the locust bloom. I saw him push his boat from the
shore and dip his oars in the clear heaven of the crystal waters. She
was his only companion. And as the painted keel darted away like a bird
beneath the bending boughs and went skimming round the bend of the river
I heard their voices blending up among the cliffs and shadows singing a
sweet love song. To him, she was a full blow’n rose of beauty; to her,
he was a daisy. To him her ribbons were streaks of light; to her his
fuzzy upper lip was a poem. They floated and fished and fished and
floated away the golden hours; and while they fished and floated, he
wooed her—he wooed and he wooed and he wooed—until, at length, he won
her; and, as they floated homeward in the evening, dreaming of wedding
bells and orange blossoms,
He held her soft little hand in his,
Smoothing her hair so brown;
The boat struck a rock and they both fell in,
Just as the sun went down!
I looked upon these scenes of light and love and I walked in the heaven
of the beautiful, the somnambulist of a rapturous dream.
O, matchless dream maker, voluptuous June! Enchantress of the sun, Eden
builder of the world! There is a magic in thy touch which melts the
icicles in the veins of age and makes the tropic blood of youth run
roses.
There are heavens all around us with beautiful gates ajar: I have seen
October open a gate of opal and I walked in the heaven of autumnal
glory. I have seen her splash the forest with the tints of a thousand
shattered rainbows, and then draw the misty veil of Indian summer—that
mysterious phantom of the air that conjures the sunlight into yellow
amber and turns the world into a dream.
I joined the farmers in the jubilee of the county fair, and walked
through streets of pumpkins, purple avenues of turnips, and fragrant
boulevards of onions, enough to bring the world to tears.
There was the sound of the hunter’s horn at the break of day. I mounted
my gallant steed and galloped away to the rendezvous, and every breath
of the cool, crisp October air was like a draught of exhilarating wine.
The hunters assembled at the appointed place, the eager hounds were
unleashed and they scurried away like ghosts in the gloomy woods. They
coursed and circled like flying shadows—now and then giving tongue as
they took up the scent of some cold and doubtful trail. Faster and
faster they circled, until they jumped the fox from his covert and
opened in full cry, and it was like a sudden burst of music from a band.
Away they bounded, bellowing their deep-mouthed serenade to the wily
knight of the red plume, who showed them a clean pair of heels. They
pushed him up the rocky steeps and pressed him down the dusky hollows,
they swung him through the highland gaps and whirled him round the
ridges. Over the hills and round the knob Sir Reynard led the band until
the waking echoes caught up the flying melody and sent it pulsing from
cliff to cliff and from crag to crag! On fled the fox with tireless
leap! on followed the hounds with smoking mouths! On and on, over hill
and dale, through forest and field until finally the music died away
like the chime of distant bells!
How sweet are the lips of morning that kiss the waking world; how sweet
is the bosom of night that pillows the world to rest; but sweeter than
the lips of morning and sweeter than the bosom of night is the voice of
music that wakes a world of joys and soothes a world of sorrows. It is
like some unseen ethereal ocean whose silver surf forever breaks in
song. All nature is full of music. There is a melody in every sunbeam, a
sunbeam in every melody. There is a love song in every flower, a sonnet
in every gurgling fountain, a hymn in every rolling billow. Music is the
twin angel of light, the first born of heaven, and mortal ear and mortal
eye have caught only the echo and the shadow of their celestial glories.
[Illustration:
He wooed and he wooed and he wooed.
]
The violin is the poet laureate of music—violin of the virtuoso and
master, fiddle of the untutored in the ideal art. It is the aristocrat
of the palace and the hall; it is the democrat of the unpretentious home
and humble cabin. As violin, it weaves its garlands of roses and
camellias; as fiddle it scatters its modest violets. It is admired by
the cultured for its magnificent powers and wonderful creations. It is
loved by the millions for its simple melodies.
One bright morning just before Christmas Day, an official stood in the
executive chamber in my presence as governor of Tennessee, and said:
“Governor, I have been implored by a poor, miserable wretch in the
penitentiary to bring you this rude fiddle. It was made by his own hands
with a penknife during the hours allotted to him for rest. It is
entirely without value, as you can see, but it is his petition to you
for mercy. He begged me to say that he has neither influential friends
nor attorneys to plead for him; and all that he asks is that, when the
governor shall sit at his own happy fireside on Christmas eve with his
own happy children around him, he will play one tune to them on this
rough fiddle and think of a cabin far away in the mountains whose
hearthstone is cold and desolate and surrounded by a family of poor
little helpless ragged children, crying for bread and waiting and
listening for the footsteps of their father.”
Who would not have been touched by such an appeal? The record was
examined. Christmas eve came. The governor sat that night at his own
happy fireside, with his own happy children around him and he played one
tune to them on that rough fiddle. The fireside of the cabin in the
mountains was bright and warm. A pardoned prisoner sat with his baby on
his knee, surrounded by his happy children and in the presence of his
rejoicing wife. And, although there was naught but rags and squalid
poverty around him his heart sang,
“Be it ever so humble,
There’s no place like home.”
When I used to play the role of governor of the old Volunteer State, I
often felt the stings of criticism for the liberal use of the pardoning
power. But I saw old mothers with their white locks and wrinkled brows
swoon at the governor’s feet every day. I saw old fathers with broken
hearts and tear-stained faces and heard them plead by the hour for their
wayward boys. I saw a wife and seven children clad in tatters and rags
and barefooted in midwinter fall down upon their knees around him who
held the pardoning power. I saw a little girl climb upon the governor’s
knee and put her little arms around his neck and I heard her ask him if
he had little girls; and then I saw her sob upon his bosom as though her
little heart would break and heard her plead for mercy for her poor,
miserable, wretched convict father. I saw want and woe and agony and
anguish unutterable pass before the gubernatorial door. And I said: “Let
this heartless world condemn! let the critics frown and rail, but he who
hath power and doth not temper justice with mercy will cry in vain
himself for mercy on that great day when God shall judge the merciful
and the unmerciful!”
SOUTHERN
PLATFORM
DEPARTMENT