“Oh! You play with your feet! Wonderful!”
“Yes. Now try without the pedals.”
Then Paul placed his hands upon the keyboard. A simple Mozart melody flowed from under his fingers, a bit of the glorious Twelfth Mass. An expression of surprise lit up the old man’s face. He began manipulating the stops. Paul stopped playing.
“What are you doing with those things?” he inquired, amazed at the variation in the tone produced by the stops.
The old man eagerly proceeded to explain the mechanism of the organ, demonstrating the value and purpose of each stop as he went along.
“Now,” he said, “you play. I will show you how the stops go. Do that Mozart thing again.”
With growing confidence and courage Paul began to play and soon in the rapture of the music forgot himself. From one master to another he went, doing his piano music, exhilarated, overwhelmed, the old man following or anticipating his moods with the stops. Finally he wandered into his own Spring Symphony, the “Out of Doors” Symphony of Pine Croft. He stopped abruptly.
“Tell me, is there any stop for running water?”
“What are you playing?” inquired the old organist.
“Oh, a foolish little thing that I call the Spring Symphony, an out-of-doors thing. What is the stop for running water?”