"
"Then I thank God unceasingly for my infirmity," said Anthony Croft,
as he raised her to her feet.
. . . . . .
Anthony and Lyddy Croft sat in the apple orchard,
one warm day in late spring.
Anthony's work would have puzzled a casual on-looker. Ten stout
wires were stretched between two trees, fifteen or twenty feet apart,
and each group of five represented the lines of the musical staff.
Wooden bars crossed the wires at regular intervals, dividing the staff
into measures. A box with many compartments sat on a stool beside him,
and this held bits of wood that looked like pegs, but were in reality whole,
half, quarter, and eighth notes, rests, flats, sharps, and the like.
These were cleft in such a way that he could fit them on the wires
almost as rapidly as his musical theme came to him, and Lyddy had learned
to transcribe with pen and ink the music she found in wood and wire,
He could write only simple airs in this way, but when he played
them on the violin they were transported into a loftier region,
such genius lay in the harmony, the arabesque, the delicate lacework
of embroidery with which the tune was inwrought; now high, now low,
now major, now minor, now sad, now gay, with the one thrilling,
haunting cadence recurring again and again, to be watched for, longed for,
and greeted with a throb of delight.
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