"
"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 crouched 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 winced at false work, and loved the true.
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