I.  
     “Goodfellow, Puck and goblins,
     Know more than any book.
     Down with your doleful problems,
     And court the sunny brook¹.
     The south-winds are quick-witted,
     The schools are sad and slow,
     The masters quite omitted
     The lore² we care to know.”
 
     Emerson's April.
“Find the 317th page, Davy, and begin at the top of the right-hand column.”
 
The boy turned the leaves of the old instruction book obediently, and then began to read in a sing-song, monotonous³ tone:—
 
“'One of Pag-pag'”—
 
“Pag-a-ni-ni's.”
 
“'One of Paggernyner's' (I wish all the fellers in your stories didn't have such tough old names!) 'most dis-as-ter-ous triumphs he had when playing at Lord Holland's.' (Who was Lord Holland, uncle Tony?) 'Some one asked him to im-pro-vise on the violin the story of a son who kills his father, runs a-way, becomes a highway-man, falls in love with a girl who will not listen to him; so he leads her to a wild country site, suddenly jumping with her from a rock into an a-b-y-double-s'”—
 
“Abyss.”
 
“'—a—rock—into—an—abyss, were they disappear forever. Paggernyner listened quietly, and when the story was at an end he asked that all the lights should be distinguished⁵.'”
 
“Look closer, Davy.”
 
“'Should be extinguished. He then began playing, and so terrible was the musical in-ter-pre-ta-tion of the idea which had been given him that several of the ladies fainted, and the sal-salon-salon, when relighted, looked like a battle-field.' Cracky! Wouldn't you like to have been there, uncle Tony? But I don't believe anybody ever played that way, do you?”
 
“Yes,” said the listener, dreamily raising his sightless eyes to the elm-tree that grew by the kitchen door. “I believe it, and I can hear it myself when you read the story to me. I feel that the secret of everything in the world that is beautiful, or true, or terrible, is hidden in the strings⁶ of my violin, Davy, but only a master can draw it from captivity⁷.”
 
“You make stories on your violin, too, uncle Tony, even if the ladies don't faint away in heaps, and if the kitchen doesn't look like a battle-field when you 've finished. I'm glad it doesn't, for my part, for I should have more housework to do than ever.”
 
“Poor Davy! you couldn't hate housework any worse if you were a woman; but it is all done for to-day. Now paint me one of your pictures, laddie; make me see with your eyes.”
 
The boy put down the book and leaped out of the open door, barely touching⁸ the old millstone that served for a step. Taking a stand in the well-worn path, he rested his hands on his hips¹⁰, swept the landscape with the glance of an eagle, and began like a young improvisator:—
 
“The sun is just dropping behind Brigadier Hill.”
 
“What color is it?”
 
“Red as fire, and there isn't anything near it,—it 's almost alone in the sky; there 's only teenty little white feather clouds here and there. The bridge looks as if it was a silver string tying the two sides of the river together. The water is pink where the sun shines into it. All the leaves of the trees are kind of swimming in the red light,—I tell you, nunky, just as if I was looking through red glass. The weather vane on Squire¹³ Bean's barn dazzles so the rooster seems to be shooting gold arrows into the river. I can see the tip top of Mount Washington where the peak of its snow-cap touches the pink sky. The hen-house door is open. The chickens are all on their roost, with their heads cuddled under their wings.”
 
“Did you feed them?”
 
The boy clapped his hand over his mouth with a comical gesture of penitence¹⁴, and dashed into the shed for a panful of corn, which he scattered¹⁵ over the ground, enticing¹⁶ the sleepy fowls¹⁷ by insinuating¹⁸ calls of “Chick, chick, chick, chick! Come, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy! Come, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick!”
 
The man in the doorway¹⁹ smiled as over the misdemeanor of somebody very dear and lovable, and rising from his chair felt his way to a corner shelf, took down a box, and drew from it a violin swathed in a silk bag. He removed the covering with reverential hands. The tenderness of the face was like that of a young mother dressing²⁰ or undressing her child. As he fingered the instrument his hands seemed to have become all eyes. They wandered caressingly²¹ over the polished surface as if enamored of the perfect thing that they had created, lingering here and there with rapturous tenderness on some special beauty,—the graceful²² arch of the neck, the melting curves of the cheeks, the delicious swell²³ of the breasts.
 
When he had satisfied himself for the moment, he took the bow, and lifting the violin under his chin, inclined his head fondly toward it and began to play.
 
The tune²⁴ at first seemed muffled²⁵, but had a curious bite, that began in distant echoes, but after a few minutes' the playing grew firmer and clearer, ringing out at last with velvety²⁶ richness and strength until the atmosphere was satiated with harmony. No more ethereal note ever flew out of a bird's throat than Anthony Croft set free from this violin, his liebling, his “swan song,” made in the year he had lost his eyesight.
 
Anthony Croft had been the only son of his mother, and she a widow. His boyhood had been exactly like that of all the other boys in Edgewood, save that he hated school a trifle more, if possible, than any of the others; though there was a unanimity²⁷ of aversion in this matter that surprised and wounded teachers and parents.
 
The school was the ordinary “deestrick” school of that time; there were not enough scholars for what Cyse Higgins called a “degraded” school. The difference between Anthony and the other boys lay in the reason as well as the degree of his abhorrence²⁸.
 
He had come into the world a naked, starving human soul; he longed to clothe himself, and he was hungry and ever hungrier for knowledge; but never within the four walls of the village schoolhouse could he get hold of one fact that would yield him its secret sense, one glimpse of clear light that would shine in upon the “darkness which may be felt” in his mind, one thought or word that would feed his soul.
 
The only place where his longings²⁹ were ever stilled, where he seemed at peace with himself, where he understood what he was made for, was out of doors in the woods. When he should have been poring over the sweet, palpitating mysteries of the multiplication³¹ table, his vagrant³² gaze was always on the open window near which he sat. He could never study when a fly buzzed on the window-pane; he was always standing³³ on the toes of his bare feet, trying to locate and understand the buzz that puzzled him. The book was a mute, soulless thing that had no relation to his inner world of thought and feeling. He turned ever from the dead seven-times-six to the mystery of life about him.
 
He was never a special favorite with his teachers; that was scarcely to be expected. In his very early years, his pockets were gone through with every morning when he entered the school door, and the contents, when confiscated³⁵, would comprise a jew's-harp³⁶, a bit of catgut, screws whittled³⁷ out of wood, tacks³⁸, spools³⁹, pins, and the like. But when robbed of all these he could generally secrete⁴⁰ a piece of elastic⁴¹, which, when put between his teeth and stretched to its utmost capacity, would yield a delightful⁴² twang when played upon with the forefinger⁴³. He could also fashion an interesting musical instrument in his desk by means of spools and catgut and bits of broken glass. The chief joy of his life was an old tuning-fork that the teacher of the singing school had given him, but, owing to the degrading and arbitrary censorship of pockets that prevailed, he never dared bring it into the schoolroom. There were ways, however, of evading⁴⁴ inexorable law and circumventing⁴⁵ base injustice⁴⁶. He hid the precious thing under a thistle just outside the window. The teacher had sometimes a brief season of apathy⁴⁷ on hot afternoons, when she was hearing the primer class read, “I see a pig. The pig is big. The big pig can dig;” which stirring in phrases were always punctuated⁴⁹ by the snores of the Hanks baby, who kept sinking down on his fat little legs in the line and giving way to slumber⁵⁰ during the lesson. At such a moment Anthony slipped out of the window and snapped the tuning-fork several times,—just enough to save his soul from death,—and then slipped in again. He was caught occasionally, but not often; and even when he was, there were mitigating⁵¹ circumstances, for he was generally put under the teacher's desk for punishment. It was a dark, close, sultry spot, but when he was well seated, and had grown tied of looking at the triangle of elastic in the teacher's congress boot, and tired of wishing it was his instead of hers, he would tie one end of a bit of thread to the button of his gingham shirt, and, carrying it round his left ear several times, make believe he was Paganini languishing⁵² in prison and playing on a violin with a single string.
 
As he grew older there was no marked improvement, and Tony Croft was by general assent⁵⁴ counted the laziest boy in the village. That he was lazy in certain matters merely because he was in a frenzy⁵⁶ of industry to pursue certain others had nothing to do with the case, of course.
 
If any one had ever given him a task in which he could have seen cause working to effect, in which he could have found by personal experiment a single fact that belonged to him, his own by divine right of discovery, he would have counted labor⁵⁷ or study all joy.
 
He was one incarnate⁵⁸ Why and How, one brooding wonder and interrogation point. “Why does the sun drive away the stars? Why do the leaves turn red and gold? What makes the seed swell in the earth? From whence comes the life hidden in the egg under the bird's breast? What holds the moon in the sky? Who regulates her shining? Who moves the wind? Who made me, and what am I? Who, why, how whither? If I came from God but only lately, teach me his lessons first, put me into vital relation with life and law, and then give me your dead signs and equivalents for real things, that I may learn more and more, and ever more and ever more.”
 
There was no spirit in Edgewood bold enough to conceive that Tony learned anything in the woods, but as there was never sufficient school money to keep the village seat of learning open more than half the year the boy educated himself at the fountain head of wisdom, and knowledge of the other half. His mother, who owned him for a duckling hatched from a hen's egg, and was never quite sure he would not turn out a black sheep and a crooked⁵⁹ stick to boot, was obliged to confess that Tony had more useless information than any boy in the village. He knew just where to find the first Mayflowers, and would bring home the waxen beauties when other people had scarcely begun to think about the spring. He could tell where to look for the rare fringed gentian, the yellow violet, the Indian pipe. There were clefts⁶¹ in the rocks of the Indian Cellar where, when every one else failed, he could find harebells and columbines.
 
When his tasks were done, and the other boys were amusing themselves each in his own way, you would find Tony lying flat on the pine needles in the woods, listening to the notes of the wild birds, and imitating them patiently, til you could scarcely tell which was boy and which was bird; and if you could, the birds couldn't, for many a time he coaxed⁶³ the bobolinks and thrushes to perch⁶⁴ on the low boughs⁶⁵ above his head and chirp⁶⁷ to him as if he were a feathered brother. There was nothing about the building of nests with which he was not familiar. He could have taken hold and helped if the birds had not been so shy, and if he had had beak⁶⁸ and claw instead of clumsy fingers. He would sit near a beehive for hours without moving, or lie prone⁶⁹ in the sandy road, under the full glare of the sun, watching the ants acting⁷⁰ out their human comedy; sometimes surrounding a favorite hill with stones, that the comedy might not be turned into a tragedy by a careless footfall. The cottage on the river road grew more and more to resemble a museum and herbarium as the years went by, and the Widow Croft's weekly house-cleaning was a matter that called for the exercise of Christian⁷² grace.
 
Still, Tony was a good son, affectionate, considerate, and obedient. His mother had no idea that he would ever be able, or indeed willing, to make a living; but there was a forest of young timber growing up, a small hay farm to depend upon, and a little hoard⁷³ that would keep him out of the poorhouse when she died and left him to his own devices. It never occurred to her that he was in any way remarkable⁷⁵. If he were difficult to understand, it reflected more upon his eccentricity⁷⁶ than upon her density⁷⁷. What was a woman to do with a boy of twelve who, when she urged him to drop the old guitar he was taking apart and hurry off to school, cried, “Oh, mother! when there is so much to learn in this world, it is wicked, wicked to waste time in school.”
 
About this period Tony spent hours in the attic⁷⁸ arranging bottles and tumblers into a musical scale. He also invented an instrument made of small and great, long and short pins, driven into soft board to different depths, and when the widow passed his door on the way to bed she invariable saw this barbaric thing locked up to the boy's breast, for he often played himself to sleep with it.
 
At fifteen he had taken to pieces and put together again, strengthened, soldered⁷⁹, tinkered, mended, and braced⁸⁰ every accordion⁸¹, guitar, melodeon, dulcimer, and fiddle⁸² in Edgewood, Pleasant River, and the neighboring villages. There was a little money to be earned in this way, but very little, as people in general regarded this “tinkering” as a pleasing diversion in which they could indulge him without danger. As an example of this attitude, Dr. Berry's wife's melodeon had lost two stops, the pedals had severed⁸³ connection with the rest of the works, it wheezed⁸⁴ like an asthmatic, and two black keys were missing. Anthony worked more than a week on its rehabilitation⁸⁵, and received in return Mrs. Berry's promise that the doctor would pull a tooth for him some time! This, of course, was a guerdon for the future, but it seemed pathetically distant to the lad who had never had a toothache in his life. He had to plead with Cyse Higgins for a week before that prudent⁸⁶ young farmer would allow him to touch his five-dollar fiddle. He obtained permission at last only because by offering to give Cyse his calf⁸⁷ in case he spoiled the violin. “That seems square,” said Cyse doubtfully, “but after all, you can't play on a calf!” “Neither will your fiddle give milk, if you keep it long enough,” retorted Tony; and this argument was convincing.
 
So great was his confidence in Tony's skill that Squire Bean trusted his father's violin to him, one that had been bought in Berlin seventy years before. It had been hanging on the attic wall for a half century, so that the back was split in twain, the sound-post lost, the neck and the tailpiece cracked. The lad took it home, and studied it for two whole evenings before the open fire. The problem of restoring it was quite beyond his abilities. He finally took the savings⁸⁸ of two summers' “blueberry money” and walked sixteen miles to Portland, where he bought a book called The Practical Violinist. The Supplement proved to be a mine of wealth. Even the headings appealed to his imagination and intoxicated⁹⁰ him with their suggestions,—On Scraping, Splitting, and Repairing Violins, Violin Players, Great Violinists, Solo Playing, etc.; and at the very end a Treatise⁹¹ on the Construction, Preservation⁹², Repair, and Improvement of the Violin, by Jacob Augustus Friedheim, Instrument Maker⁹³ to the Court of the Archduke of Weimar.
 
There was a good deal of moral advice in the preface that sadly puzzled the boy, who was always in a condition of chronic⁹⁴ amazement⁹⁵ at the village disapprobation of his favorite fiddle. That the violin did not in some way receive the confidence enjoyed by other musical instruments, he perceived from various paragraphs written by the worthy⁹⁶ author of The Practical Violinist, as for example:—
 
“Some very excellent Christian people hold a strong prejudice against the violin because they have always known it associated with dancing and dissipation. Let it be understood that your violin is 'converted,' and such an obligation will no longer lie against it. ... Many delightful hours may be enjoyed by a young man, if he has obtained a respectable knowledge of his instrument, who otherwise would find the time hang heavy on his hands; or, for want of some better amusement, would frequent the dangerous and destructive paths of vice⁷⁴ and be ruined forever. ... I am in hopes, therefore, my dear young pupil, that your violin will occupy your attention at just those very times when, if you were immoral⁹⁷ or dissipated, you would be at the grogshop, gaming-table, or among vicious females. Such a use of the violin, notwithstanding the prejudices many hold against it, must contribute to virtue⁹⁸, and furnish abundance of innocent and entirely⁹⁹ unobjectionable amusement. These are the views with which I hope you have adopted it, and will continue to cherish and cultivate it.”
 
II.
 
     “There is no bard¹⁰⁰ in all the choir¹⁰¹,
    .......
     Not one of all can put in verse,
     Or to this presence could rehearse
     The sights and voices ravishing
     The boy knew on the hills in spring,
     When pacing through the oaks he heard
     Sharp queries¹⁰² of the sentry-bird,
     The heavy grouse's sudden whir,
     The rattle¹⁰³ of the kingfisher.”
 
     Emerson's Harp.
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 pointed¹⁰⁴ 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 discord¹⁰⁵, as
 
     “Fairy folk a-listening
     Hear the seed sprout¹⁰⁶ in the spring,
     And for music to their dance
     Hear the hedge-rows wake from trance;
     Sap that trembles into buds
     Sending little rhythmic¹⁰⁷ 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 mechanism¹⁰⁸ 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 plumber¹⁰⁹ 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 epoch¹¹⁰ 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 browsing¹¹¹ 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 Maple¹¹² 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 stump¹¹³ 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 reverently¹¹⁴ 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 tinkle¹¹⁵, tinkle of the stream fell on the wood already wrought¹¹⁶ upon by years of sunshine and choruses of singing birds.
 
This boy, toiling¹¹⁷ not alone for himself, but with full and conscious purpose for posterity¹¹⁸ also, was he not worthy to wear the mantle¹¹⁹ 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 crouched¹²¹ 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 winced¹²² 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 forth¹²³ again; for while imperious genius surmounts¹²⁴ all obstacles, brushes laws and formulas from its horizon, and with its own free soul sees its “path and the outlets¹²⁵ 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 allotted¹²⁶ tasks, humble¹²⁷ or splendid, in this consecrated¹²⁸ fashion!
 
III.
 
     “Therein I hear the Parcae reel
     The threads of man at their humming wheel,
     The threads of life and power and pain,
     So sweet and mournful falls the strain.”
 
     Emerson's Harp.
Old Mrs. Butterfield had had her third stroke of paralysis¹²⁹, and died of a Sunday night. She was all alone in her little cottage on the river bank, with no neighbor nearer than Croft's, and nobody there but a blind man and a small boy. Everybody had told her it was foolish to live alone in a house on the river road, and everybody was pleased in a discreet¹³⁰ and chastened fashion of course, that it had turned out exactly as they had predicted.
 
Aunt Mehitable Tarbox was walking up to Milliken's Mills, with her little black reticule hanging over her arm, and noticing that there was no smoke coming out of the chimney, and that the hens were gathered about the kitchen door clamoring for their breakfast, she thought it best to stop and knock. No response followed the repeated blows from her hard knuckles¹³¹. She then tapped smartly on Mrs. Butterfield's bedroom window with her thimble finger. This proving of no avail, she was obliged to pry¹³² open the kitchen shutter¹³³, split open a mosquito netting with her shears¹³⁴, and crawl into the house over the sink. This was a considerable feat¹² for a somewhat rheumatic elderly lady, but this one never grudged¹³⁶ trouble when she wanted to find out anything.
 
When she discovered that her premonitions were correct, and that old Mrs. Butterfield was indeed dead, her grief at losing a pleasant acquaintance was largely mitigated¹³⁷ by her sense of importance at being first on the spot, and chosen by Providence¹³⁸ to take command of the situation. There were no relations in the village; there was no woman neighbor within a mile: it was therefore her obvious Christian duty not only to take charge of the remains¹³⁹, but to conduct such a funeral as the remains would have wished for herself.
 
The fortunate Vice-President suddenly called upon by destiny to guide the ship of state, the general who sees a possible Victoria Cross in a hazardous¹⁴⁰ engagement, can have a faint conception of aunt Hitty's feeling on this momentous¹⁴¹ occasion. Funerals were the very breath of her life. There was no ceremony, either of public or private import, that, to her mind, approached a funeral in real satisfying interest. Yet, with distinct talent in this direction, she had always been “cabined, cribbed, confined” within hopeless limitations. She had assisted in a secondary capacity at funerals in the families of other people, but she would have reveled in personally conducted ones. The members of her own family stubbornly refused to die, however, even the distant connections living on and on to a ridiculous old age; and if they ever did die, by reason of a falling roof, shipwreck¹⁴², or conflagration¹⁴³, they generally died in Texas or Iowa, or some remote State where aunt Hitty could not follow the hearse in the first carriage. This blighted¹⁴⁴ ambition was a heart sorrow of so deep and sacred a character that she did not even confess it to “Si,” as her appendage¹⁴⁵ of a husband was called.
 
Now at last her chance for planning a funeral had come. Mrs. Butterfield had no kith or kin⁹ save her niece, Lyddy Ann, who lived in Andover, or Lawrence, or Haverhill Massachusetts,—aunt Hitty couldn't remember which, and hoped nobody else could. The niece would be sent for when they found out where she lived; meanwhile the funeral could not be put off.
 
She glanced round the house preparatory to locking it up and starting to notify Anthony Croft. She would just run over and talk to him about ordering the coffin¹⁴⁶; then she could attend to all other necessary preliminaries herself. The remains had been well-to-do, and there was no occasion for sordid¹⁴⁷ economy, so aunt Hitty determined¹⁴⁸ in her own mind to have the latest fashion in everything, including a silver coffin plate. The Butterfield coffin plates were a thing to be proud of. They had been sacredly preserved for years and years, and the entire collection—numbering nineteen in all had been framed, and adorned¹⁴⁹ the walls of the deceased lady's best room. They were not of solid silver, it is true, but even so it was a matter of distinction to have belonged to a family that could afford to have nineteen coffin plates of any sort.
 
Aunt Hitty planned certain dramatic details as she walked town the road to Croft's. It came to her in a burst of inspiration that she would have two ministers: one for the long prayer, and one for the short prayer and the remarks. She hoped that Elder Weeks would be adequate in the latter direction. She knew she couldn't for the life of her think of anything interesting about Mrs. Butterfield, save that she possessed¹⁵² nineteen coffin plates, and brought her hens to Edgewood every summer for their health; but she had heard Elder Weeks make a moving discourse¹⁵³ out of less than that. To be sure, he needed priming, but she was equal to that. There was Ivory Brown's funeral: how would that have gone on if it hadn't been for her? Wasn't the elder ten minutes late, and what would his remarks have amounted to without her suggestions? You might almost say she was the author of the discourse, for she gave him all the appropriate ideas. As she had helped him out of the wagon¹⁵⁵ she had said: “Are you prepared? I thought not; but there's no time to lose. Remember there are aged⁷¹ parents; two brothers living, one railroading in Spokane Falls, the other clerking in Washington, D. C. Don't mention the Universalists,—there's ben two in the fam'ly; nor insanity,—there 's ben one o' them. The girl in the corner by the clock is the one that the remains has been keeping comp'ny with. If you can make some genteel allusions¹⁵⁶ to her, it'll be much appreciated by his folks.”
 
As to the long prayer, she knew that the Rev⁴. Mr. Ford¹⁵⁰ could be relied on to pray until aunt Becky Burnham should twitch¹⁵⁷ him by the coat tails. She had done it more than once. She had also, on one occasion, got up and straightened his ministerial neckerchief, which he had gradually “prayed” around his saintly neck until it was behind the right ear.
 
These plans proved so fascinating to aunt Hitty that she walked quite half a mile beyond Croft's, and was obliged to retrace¹⁵⁸ her steps. She conceived bands of black alpaca for the sleeves and hats of the pallbearers, and a festoon of the same over the front gate, if there should be any left over. She planned the singing by the choir. There had been no real choir-singing at any funeral in Edgewood since the Rev. Joshua Beckwith had died. She would ask them to open with—
 
     Rebel mourner, cease your weepin'.
     You too must die.
This was a favorite funeral hymn¹⁵⁹. The only difficulty would be in keeping aunt Becky Burnham from pitching it in a key where nobody but a soprano skylark, accustomed to warble at a great height, could possibly sing it. It was generally given at the grave, when Elder Weeks officiated; but it never satisfied aunt Hitty, because the good elder always looked so unpicturesque when he threw a red bandanna¹⁶⁰ handkerchief over his head before beginning the twenty-seven verses. After the long prayer, she would have Almira Berry give for a solo—
 
     This gro-o-oanin' world 's too dark and
     dre-e-ar for the saints' e - ter - nal rest,
This hymn, if it did not wholly reconcile one to death, enabled one to look upon life with sufficient solemnity. It was a thousand pities, she thought, that the old hearse was so shabby and rickety, and that Gooly Eldridge, who drove it, would insist on wearing a faded peach-blow overcoat. It was exasperating¹⁶¹ to think of the public spirit at Egypt, and contrast it with the state of things at Pleasant River. In Egypt they had sold the old hearse house for a sausage shop, and now they were having hearse sociables every month to raise money for a new one.
 
All these details flew through aunt Hitty's mind in fascinating procession. There shouldn't be “a hitch¹⁶²” anywhere. There had been a hitch at her last funeral, but she had been only an assistant there. Matt Henderson had been struck by lightning at the foot of Squire Bean's old nooning tree, and certain circumstances combined to make the funeral one of unusual interest, so much so that fat old Mrs. Potter from Deerwander created a sensation at the cemetery¹⁶³. She was so anxious to get where she could see everything to the best advantage that she crowded too near the bier, stepped on the sliding earth, and pitched into the grave. As she weighed over two hundred pounds, and was in a position of some disadvantage, it took five men to extricate¹⁶⁴ her from the dilemma¹⁶⁵, and the operation made a long and somewhat awkward break in the religious services. Aunt Hitty always said of this catastrophe¹⁶⁶, “If I'd 'a' ben Mis' Potter, I'd 'a' ben so mortified¹⁶⁷ I believe I'd 'a' said, 'I wa'n't plannin' to be buried, but now I'm in here I declare I'll stop!'”
 
Old Mrs. Butterfield's funeral was not only voted an entire success by the villagers, but the seal of professional approval was set upon it by an undertaker from Saco, who declared that Mrs. Tarbox could make a handsome living in the funeral line anywhere. Providence, who always assists those who assist themselves, decreed that the niece Lyddy Ann should not arrive until the aunt was safely buried; so, there being none to resist her right or grudge¹³⁵ her the privilege aunt Hitty, for the first time in her life, rode in the next buggy to the hearse. Si, in his best suit, a broad weed and weepers, drove Cyse Higgins's black colt, and aunt Hitty was dressed in deep mourning, with the Widow Buzzell's crape veil over her face, and in her hand a palmleaf fan tied with a black ribbon. Her comment to Si, as she went to her virtuous¹⁶⁸ couch that night, was: “It was an awful dry funeral, but that was the only flaw in it. It would 'a' ben perfect if there' ben anybody to shed tears. I come pretty nigh it myself, though I ain't no relation, when Elder Weeks said, 'You'll go round the house, my sisters, and Mis' Butterfield won't be there; you'll go int' the orchard¹⁶⁹, and Mis' Butterfield won't be there; you'll go int' the barn and Mis' Butterfield won't be there; you'll go int' the shed, and Mis' Butterfield won't be there; you'll go int' the hencoop, and Mis' Butterfield won't be there!' That would 'a' drawed tears from a stone most, 'specially¹⁷⁰ sence Mis' Butterfield set such store by her hens.”
 
And this is the way that Lyddy Butterfield came into her kingdom, a little lone¹¹ brown house on the river's brim. She had seen it only once before when she had driven out from Portland, years ago, with her aunt. Mrs. Butterfield lived in Portland, but spent her summers in Edgewood on account of her chickens. She always explained that the country was dreadful dull for her, but good for the hens; they always laid so much better in the winter time.
 
Lyddy liked the place all the better for its loneliness. She had never had enough of solitude¹⁷², and this quiet home, with the song of the river for company, if one needed more company than chickens and a cat, satisfied all her desires, particularly as it was accompanied by a snug¹⁷³ little income of two hundred dollars a year, a meagre sum that seemed to open up mysterious avenues of joy to her starved, impatient heart.
 
When she was a mere⁵⁵ infant, her brother was holding her on his knee before the great old-fashioned fireplace heaped with burning logs. A sudden noise startled him, and the crowing, restless baby gave an unexpected lurch¹⁷⁴, and slipped, face downward, into the glowing embers. It was a full minute before the horror-stricken boy could extricate the little creature from the cruel flame that had already done its fatal work. The baby escaped with her life, but was disfigured forever. As she grew older, the gentle hand of time could not entirely efface¹⁷⁵ the terrible scars. One cheek was wrinkled and crimson¹⁷⁶, while one eye and the mouth were drawn¹⁷⁷ down pathetically. The accident might have changed the disposition¹⁷⁸ of any child, but Lyddy chanced to be a sensitive, introspective bit of feminine humanity, in whose memory the burning flame was never quenched¹⁷⁹. Her mother, partly to conceal¹⁸⁰ her own wounded vanity, and partly to shield the timid, morbid¹⁸¹ child, kept her out of sight as much as possible; so that at sixteen, when she was left an orphan¹⁸², she had lived almost entirely in solitude.
 
She became, in course of time, a kind of general nursery governess in a large family of motherless children. The father was almost always away from home; his sister kept the house, and Lyddy stayed in the nursery, bathing the brood and putting them to bed, dressing them in the morning, and playing with them in the safe privacy of the back garden or the open attic. They loved her, disfigured as she was, for the child despises............