“But the sun is bright and warm, and the seed grows. Careless feet trample upon it—there is yet one more hurt. But it straightens, waits through the long nights for the blessed sun, and so on, until it is so high as one bush.
“Constantly, there is growing, one aspiration upward. Bark comes and the tree swells outward, always with pain. Someone cuts off all the lower branches, and the tree bleeds, yet keeps on. Other branches come thick about it; there is one struggle, but through the dense growth the tree climbs, always upward. In the sun above the thick shade, it can laugh at the ache and the thorns, but it does not forget.
“And so, upward, always upward, till it is lifted high above its fellows. Birds come there to sing, to build their nests, to rear their young, to mourn when one little bird falls out from the nest and is made dead.
“The sun shines fiercely, and it nearly dies in the heat. The storm comes and it is shrouded in ice—made almost to die with the cold. The wild winds rock it and tear off the branches, making it bleed—there must always be pain. The thunders play over its head, the lightnings burn it, and yet its heart lives on. The rains beat upon it like one river, and still it grows.
“The years go by and each one brings new hurt, but the tree is made hard and strong. One day there comes a man to look at it, all the straight fine length, the smooth trunk. ‘It will do,’ he says, and with his axe he chops it down. Do you think it does not hurt the tree? After the long years of fighting, to be cut like that?
“Then it falls, crashing heavy through the branches to the ground. See, there must always be pain, even at the end. Then more cutting, more bleeding, more heat, more cold. Fine tools—steel knives that tear and split the fibres apart. Do you think it does not hurt? More sun, more cold, still more cutting, tearing, and throwing aside. Then, one day, it is finished, and there is mine Cremona—all the strength, all the beauty, all the pain, made into mine violin!
“But the end is not yet. God is working with me and mine as well as with mine instrument. As yet, I do not know that it is for me—it comes to me through pain.
“One old gentleman, one of the first to travel abroad from this country for pleasure, he goes to Italy, he finds it in the hands of one ignorant drunkard, and he buys it for little. He brings it home, but he cannot play, and no one else can play; he does not know its value, but it pleases him and he takes it. For long years, it stays in one attic, with the dust and the cobwebs, kicked aside by careless feet.
“Meanwhile, I know one lovely young lady. I meet her by chance, and we like each other, oh, so much! ‘Franz,’ she says to me, ‘you live on one hill in West Lancaster, and mine mother, she would never let me speak with you, so I must see you sometimes, quite by accident, elsewhere. On pleasant days, I often go to walk in the woods. Mine mother likes me to be outdoors.’ So, many times, we meet and we talk of strange things. Each day we love each other more, and all the time her mother does not suspect. We plan to go away together and never let anyone know until we are married and it is too late, but first I must find work.