“Can ye?—Right in the center here?” Uncle William was interested.
“Well, not just here—a little out. But they’re gone.” The old gentleman sighed. “MacDowell has caught the spirit. You can hear the wind soughing through them and the branches creaking a little and rubbing, and a still kind of light all around. It’s very nice.”
“Good poetry, I s’pose,” assented Uncle William. “I don’t care so much for poetry myself. Some on it’s good,” he added thoughtfully. “‘The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck,’ that swings off kind o’ nice, and ’Horatius at the Bridge.’ But most on it has a kind o’ travelin’ round way with it—has to go round by Robin Hood’s barn to get anywheres. I’m gen’ally sort o’ drowsy whilst it’s bein’ read.”
The old gentleman had laughed out genially. “MacDowell doesn’t write poetry, except short things—lines for headings. He makes it on the piano.”
“Makes an old white-pine tree?” demanded Uncle William.
“Well—something like that.”
Uncle William returned to his program. “There’ll be a ’water-lily,’ then, will the’? and an ’eagle,’ and a ’medder brook,’ and a ’wanderin’ iceberg,’ and a ’pair o’ bars’?” He looked up with a soft twinkle. “And like enough a rooster or two, and a knock-kneed horse. I keep a-wonderin’ what that wanderin’ iceberg’ll be like. I’ve seen a wanderin’ iceberg,—leastways I’ve come mighty near one,—but I ain’t ever heard it. You ever met a wanderin’ iceberg?” His tone was friendly and solicitous.
The New York man shook his head. “Only the human kind.”
Uncle William chuckled. “I’ve met that kind myself—and the other kind, too.” He paused suddenly. The audience had hushed itself. Sergia was seated at the piano.
It was a Beethoven number, a sonata. Uncle William apparently went to sleep. Sergia, watching him, smiled gently. He must be very tired, poor dear. The next number will keep him awake all right. It did. It was sung by a famous baritone—“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest! Yo ho! Yo ho!” Uncle William sat up. Joy radiated from him. He clutched his chair with both hands and beamed. The audience laughed with delight and clapped an encore.