Philip: The Story of a Boy Violinist

by Virginia C. Young; Mary C. Hungerford

But Philip was quite accustomed to this strange underground life, and as he knew nothing of anything different or better he was as happy as the day was long. After all, our lives are very much what we make them, and Philip was blessed with a very sweet and cheerful nature, which could make its own sunshine even at the bottom of a deep, dark mine; he had beside a very strong and healthy fancy, and he had peopled the dark recesses of the mine with all kinds of imaginary beings, who were real companions for the lonely child. Instead, however, of creating, as some foolish children would have done, only gnomes and goblins to inhabit the deep caverns and underground chambers, Philip chose rather to pretend that the soft sound of dropping water, which could always be heard if one listened, was the musical language of the coal-fairies who guarded the secrets of the mine, a language which only those who were very pure and good could understand.

There was another sprite who lived in the mine, with whom Philip used to hold long conversations, and who could always reply to him, although the answer was sometimes unsatisfactory; this was the echo of his own voice, and one day the little boy lost his way and caused his mother great alarm by following this mocking voice deep into the intricate windings of an unworked shaft. He found his way out again on this particular occasion by the aid of some other spirit-friends of his, the little lamps or candles which the miners carry in their hats. At a distance these lights, glancing here and there as the men moved about their work, looked exactly like large fireflies, and it was by following these and answering the friendly voices of the miners who shouted directions to him that Philip found his way back to his mother’s side again.

And so you see that Philip led what I suppose most boys and girls would have called a very hard and lonely life, for he had few companions of his own age, and spent most of the time which other children have for play in sober work, yet he was quite happy and contented; and indeed he was much more fortunate than many of the people about him, who did not, like him, come up when the day was over, but who spent days and sometimes weeks or months down in the darkness of the mine, with never a glimpse of the blessed light of day, except what little could be seen from the long well-like shaft, up and down which went the buckets or elevators by which the miners were carried to and from their work. But when Philip’s day in the mine was over he had only to step aboard the rough elevator which carried the miners up and down, and looking upward, as he always did on this journey back to the outer world, he could see the tall derrick which pointed skyward from the mouth of the shaft like a black finger grow gradually more distinct against the blue sky, and then in a moment more he would come out into the daylight once again.

The bright sunshine always hurt his eyes at first, but how pleasant and warm it seemed after the damp twilight down below! And how glorious it was to be able to run straight ahead for miles without being obliged to stoop beneath low, dripping walls, or to squeeze through narrow openings into close, rocky chambers where the stagnant air made one cough and choke! It was almost worth while, Philip thought, to spend eight hours of the day away from this beautiful world of nature in order to come back to it again each afternoon.

“Do ye think, mother dear,” he said thoughtfully, one beautiful summer evening as they were walking home together through a field gay and fragrant with innumerable wild flowers—“do ye think that heaven can be a nicer place than this?”

His mother smiled at her boy’s earnest question, and laid her hard, rough hand on his curly head in a loving way she had. “I reckon it is, my little lad,” she said, “though we can’t quite think of it; but they says the flowers there never wither nor die, and the sky is always blue, not lowering and black as our sky is sometimes—ye mind how it looked before the thunder-storm last night. The pleasures in that land will leave no ugly sting behind them, folks tells us, as they does here ’most always.”

She spoke with a sad wistfulness in her voice which Philip was quick to notice, and he slipped his little hand into hers and looked up into her face with troubled eyes.

“Tell me, mother dear,” he said gently, “why you are always so sad when we cross this field, especially in daisy time. Is it because my father used to walk here with you in the time ye said ye was used be happy?”

How marvellously wise love makes us all! Philip’s mother looked down at him wonderingly.

“However did the lad guess?” she said as though to herself; “for it was in this very field we used to wander in those happy, foolish days. Oh, it would have been far better had we never”—she did not finish the sentence, but broke off quite suddenly, telling Philip to run on ahead; and the boy did as he was bidden, but half reluctantly, for although he seldom spoke of his father, feeling instinctively that the subject was a painful one to his mother, yet he thought about him very often, pondering as children will upon a theme not understood or only half explained. He knew that his father was dead—so much his mother had told him; and many a time he had heard her say that if it were not for her boy she could find it in her heart to wish herself dead too. He also knew that a locket which his mother always wore on a chain about her neck contained a portrait which she had once shown to him, and which she had told him was a perfect likeness of his father. Philip looked wonderingly at the face of the handsome young gentleman, who had clustering curls like his own, but whose clothes were of a cut and texture quite unlike those worn by the men whom Philip saw every day; and then as his glance had fallen upon his mother in her rough dress, he said with a kind of awe, “What fine clothes my father wore, didn’t he, mother dear?”