第27章 A VILLAGE STRADIVARIUS.(5)

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!

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 paralysis, 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 discreet 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 knuckles.

She then tapped smartly on Mrs. Butterfield's bedroom window with her thimble finger. This proving of no avail, she was obliged to pry open the kitchen shutter, split open a mosquito netting with her shears, and crawl into the house over the sink.

This was a considerable feat for a somewhat rheumatic elderly lady, but this one never grudged 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 mitigated by her sense of importance at being first on the spot, and chosen by Providence 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 remains, 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 hazardous engagement, can have a faint conception of aunt Hitty's feeling on this momentous 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, shipwreck, or conflagration, they generally died in Texas or Iowa, or some remote State where aunt Hitty could not follow the hearse in the first carriage.

This blighted ambition was a heart sorrow of so deep and sacred a character that she did not even confess it to "Si," as her appendage of a husband was called.

Now at last her chance for planning a funeral had come.

Mrs. Butterfield had no kith or kin 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 coffin; then she could attend to all other necessary preliminaries herself.

The remains had been well-to-do, and there was no occasion for sordid economy, so aunt Hitty determined 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 adorned 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.