O, matchless dream maker, voluptuous June! Enchantress of the sun, Eden builder of the world! There is a magic in thy touch which melts the icicles in the veins of age and makes the tropic blood of youth run roses.
There are heavens all around us with beautiful gates ajar: I have seen October open a gate of opal and I walked in the heaven of autumnal glory. I have seen her splash the forest with the tints of a thousand shattered rainbows, and then draw the misty veil of Indian summer—that mysterious phantom of the air that conjures the sunlight into yellow amber and turns the world into a dream.
I joined the farmers in the jubilee of the county fair, and walked through streets of pumpkins, purple avenues of turnips, and fragrant boulevards of onions, enough to bring the world to tears.
There was the sound of the hunter’s horn at the break of day. I mounted my gallant steed and galloped away to the rendezvous, and every breath of the cool, crisp October air was like a draught of exhilarating wine. The hunters assembled at the appointed place, the eager hounds were unleashed and they scurried away like ghosts in the gloomy woods. They coursed and circled like flying shadows—now and then giving tongue as they took up the scent of some cold and doubtful trail. Faster and faster they circled, until they jumped the fox from his covert and opened in full cry, and it was like a sudden burst of music from a band. Away they bounded, bellowing their deep-mouthed serenade to the wily knight of the red plume, who showed them a clean pair of heels. They pushed him up the rocky steeps and pressed him down the dusky hollows, they swung him through the highland gaps and whirled him round the ridges. Over the hills and round the knob Sir Reynard led the band until the waking echoes caught up the flying melody and sent it pulsing from cliff to cliff and from crag to crag! On fled the fox with tireless leap! on followed the hounds with smoking mouths! On and on, over hill and dale, through forest and field until finally the music died away like the chime of distant bells!
How sweet are the lips of morning that kiss the waking world; how sweet is the bosom of night that pillows the world to rest; but sweeter than the lips of morning and sweeter than the bosom of night is the voice of music that wakes a world of joys and soothes a world of sorrows. It is like some unseen ethereal ocean whose silver surf forever breaks in song. All nature is full of music. There is a melody in every sunbeam, a sunbeam in every melody. There is a love song in every flower, a sonnet in every gurgling fountain, a hymn in every rolling billow. Music is the twin angel of light, the first born of heaven, and mortal ear and mortal eye have caught only the echo and the shadow of their celestial glories.
He wooed and he wooed and he wooed.
The violin is the poet laureate of music—violin of the virtuoso and master, fiddle of the untutored in the ideal art. It is the aristocrat of the palace and the hall; it is the democrat of the unpretentious home and humble cabin. As violin, it weaves its garlands of roses and camellias; as fiddle it scatters its modest violets. It is admired by the cultured for its magnificent powers and wonderful creations. It is loved by the millions for its simple melodies.
One bright morning just before Christmas Day, an official stood in the executive chamber in my presence as governor of Tennessee, and said:
“Governor, I have been implored by a poor, miserable wretch in the penitentiary to bring you this rude fiddle. It was made by his own hands with a penknife during the hours allotted to him for rest. It is entirely without value, as you can see, but it is his petition to you for mercy. He begged me to say that he has neither influential friends nor attorneys to plead for him; and all that he asks is that, when the governor shall sit at his own happy fireside on Christmas eve with his own happy children around him, he will play one tune to them on this rough fiddle and think of a cabin far away in the mountains whose hearthstone is cold and desolate and surrounded by a family of poor little helpless ragged children, crying for bread and waiting and listening for the footsteps of their father.”