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.
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