Then, suddenly, the wizard released them from the spell. He stopped and looked about him at his helpless victims. He shook his head at them sadly as if he regretted their folly, and drawing faithful “Betsy,” his fiddle, the one close friend of his lonely life, from its case, began to play. It was quiet music, almost like a hymn, and kind music, like friendship which endures. Paying no attention to the gasps and gurgles of those he had led into folly, he went on steadily with his playing. Deep, full and rich were the chords he played; clear and high and serene was the melody, and the troubled laughter died before such sounds. Little Simms with his aching face and humiliated spirit, was struggling to get the better of his sobs. Coulter, the conqueror, had folded his arms across his unbuttoned shirt and sat there waiting for what might happen next.
What happened next was that Haystack Thompson began to talk. He did not cease playing, but the music that came from his instrument was as soft as the summer wind in the trees.
“There’s something on my mind,” he said in his deep, kind voice, “that I want to pass on to you-all. You’re young and I’m old, and it’s fitting that what I’ve learned by living a long time should be handed on to you, who ain’t lived long and consequently hain’t had the chance to make the mistakes I have.
“The constitution of the United States says that all men are born free and equal. Now, in a way that there saying is true, and in another way it ain’t. There’s differences in men and in the chances that come to them, that can’t be gainsaid nor got around. But it is true that all men have an equal right to certain things. They’ve an equal right to be free, and an equal right to the good things God made—to sun and air and water and food. They’ve a right to feel happy and a right to be good. What’s more, they’ve got a right to learning—got a right to know what’s hid in books and in Nature. Anybody who tries to take away these rights from another is a mean cuss. He’s unfitten for other men to deal with. He’s got the soul of a wolf, and it seems like he should be hunted out of the ha’nts of men. Only that wouldn’t do, for then we’d be taking away the greatest right of all from him—the right to be good. You can’t make an outlaw of a man and expect him to be good. No, you’ve got to forgive him and help him—you’ve got to show him what his rights are, what the rights of his neighbors are.
“I’m a mountain man and my forbears were mountain men. I know the feelings of folks raised in the mountains. I know they’re brave, and kind to friends and mean to foes. I know they’ve got sense and patience, and that they’ve got folly and madness in them too. These here quarrels, like the one that broke out a few minutes ago between these two young bantams—friends of mine, both of them, and good bantams—are a wicked waste. That’s what they are. They waste human lives and human happiness. They make enemies out of folks that had ought to be friends, and they leave little children orphans and make our people the laughing stock of the world.
“For my part, I don’t wonder that the world laughs at them. I laugh at them too. They’re so behind the times—they’re so foolish—so like the wild animals out there in the mountain. They don’t seem to realize what it is to be men and to stand up fair and square, taking life and rejoicing, and letting other men take it and rejoice. They don’t seem to understand that hate is like a disease and that it causes rot at the heart and makes a man as disgusting as rotten fruit or a sick animal. They don’t understand it, because they’ve grown up in the blindness and sin of it. Why, I used to feel like that myself. I didn’t come of a quarreling family, and us Thompsons had no war of our own, but we took sides with them that had wars, and I’d have been as silly as the rest of you if I hadn’t been taught better by—” he hesitated and looked about him with a half-shy smile, drew his bow with thrilling resonance thrice across the deepest strings of his fiddle, and went on—“by my old fiddle here. Maybe you’ll understand and maybe you won’t. Music has laws. They are laws that run through everything that’s good and true—they run through the things you’re studying there in your books and they run through Nature too. They come from God and if we study them right they help us to know that we’re God’s children.
“I’ve had to study it all out for myself, but I know what I know. And the grandest thing I know is that every man has an equal right to his life, to his liberty and to his learning. You may be friends and you may be foes, but life and liberty and learning are things that friend and foe have equal rights to—equal rights! Think of it awhile. Think of it as you walk up and down this here mountain side. Think of it when you go to bed at night. I’m an old man—an old mountain man—and you’re just as good as my kin, you-all are. And I tell you, it will be a shame to you what folks will spread over the whole countryside if you drive these two young ladies away when they’ve given up their ease and their friends for the whole summer long to come up here to learn you.”
He ceased speaking, but his bow continued its magic movement back and forth across the strings. For a moment or two he played a curious melody with sharp, bright notes, like the sparks from a blazing pine. Then he spoke again.
“Skully Simms ain’t got no pa; he ain’t got no ma. He lives with his uncle and makes out the best he can. He’s pretty much alone, and it ain’t natural for children to be alone. All the rest of you can go to homes where there is folks waiting for you. But this boy has just his uncle. That ain’t much like having your ma and your brothers and sisters and your pa watching out to see you coming home and speeding you on your way. He’s been wanting to come up here to school ever since it opened. He has come up here and peered in the windows, and honed to come in. But he didn’t durst. Why? Because some of his folks, that perhaps he never so much as laid eyes on, took a dislike to some of Coulter’s folks, that Coulter never knew. Do you wonder it made me laugh and mock?”
He played on, happily. The tune took dancing feet to itself and set the hearts if not the feet of the children, to a gay rhythm. Once he lifted the bow.