You wish to hear - that is - shall I play for you?"
The young girl blushed while the young man apologized for the
wretched condition of the piano, which was out of tune, and said
they had no music.
"No music!" exclaimed Beethoven.
Then he discovered for the first time that the young lady was
blind. With profuse apologies, for seeming to have spoken so
abruptly, he desired to know how she had learned to play so well
by ear. When he heard that she had gained it by walking before
the open window while others practiced, he was so touched that
he sat down and played to the most interested audience that he
had ever entertained. Enraptured they listened.
"Who are you?" exclaimed the young man.
"Listen," said Beethoven, and as the sublime strains of the
"Sonata in F" filled the air their joy was unbounded. Seldom is
it given to man to have such appreciation. The flame of the
candle wavered, flickered, and went out. His friend opened the
shutters and let in a flood of moonlight. Under the influence of
the spell, the great composer began to improvise. Such a hold
did his own music create upon him that he hastened to his room
and worked till after the dawn of morning, reducing the great
composition to writing. It was his masterpiece, "The Moonlight
Sonata." Thus he found that it is indeed "more blessed to give
than to receive," and the gift returned to bless the giver many
times."
No wonder the musician played this fitting selection, for the
silvery light made all the sky radiant and its crystal, star-
gemmed depths seemed to shine with a light of their own,
transforming its radiant sapphire gleam, shedding it over the
glowing water and shore, tipping with silver the shrubbery at
its edge which in the dim distance formed a scene that was
enchanting. The softly sighing leaves mingled their notes with
the rippling waves and:
"Peacefully the quiet stars
Came out one after one;
The holy twilight fell upon the sea,
The summer day was done."
Dawn came with a burst of glory, and the oncoming light of the
soft, deep blue and the alluring purple. bloom that spread o'er
the ocean was Nature's compensation for those who rose early.
Before the stars had all gone to their hiding place and while
the light of a few large planets was growing dim, fading into
the clay, we were making our way down to the shore through dewy
grass, azaleas, and various shrubs, where the swamp sparrows,
robins, and catbirds were greeting the new day from their bushy
coverts with their songs of gladness.
How many songsters took part in this matitudinal concert, we are
unable to state, but there were a great number. The volume of
sweet notes would sometimes swell to a full-toned orchestra, and
then for a brief time it would die away like the flow and ebb of
the tides of a sea of melody. The robins were undoubtedly the
most gifted of all the vocalists, and their old familiar songs
heard along the seashore seemed to have an added sweetness;
their notes being as strong and pure as those of a silver flute,
making the seaside echoes ring. We have heard many robins sing,
but never have been so impressed with the excellent quality of
their songs as on that early morning, when they flung out their
medley of notes upon the balmy air. No one could doubt that here
were true artists, singing for the pleasure of it.
All along the shore lay huge boulders telling of a more ancient
pilgrimage to these parts; of a great moving mass of ice in the
gray dawn of time, that crept slowly over the land, leaving a
"stern and rock bound coast." Perhaps Plymouth Rock itself may
have been one of the number that, like these huge gray boulders
on which we stood, arrived thousands of years ago.
We returned to the hotel and after breakfast, proceeded on our
way to the old historic town of Plymouth. "The road that leads
thither is daily thronged with innumerable wheels; on a summer
day the traveler may count motors by the thousand." Yet if you
pause here awhile you may soon find within a few rods of the
fine highway primitive woodland that will give you an impression
of what it must have been three hundred years ago. Here you will
see heavy forest growths consisting of oaks, for the most part,
with maple and elm, and here and there a tangle of green brier
and barberry, interspersed with several varieties of blueberry
and huckleberry bushes.
You will perhaps recall that Eric the Red, that fearless Viking,
is reported to have landed on the coast several centuries before
the English heard of the bold promontory of "Hither Manomet." It
is well worth your time to saunter along some of the old trails
to be found in this region that lead from the main highway of
today into the "wilderness of old-time romance, where you will
find them not only marked by the pioneer, but that earlier race
who worked out these paths, no one knows how many centuries
ago."
We now and then meet with people who profess to care little for
a path when walking through a forest solitude. They do not
choose to travel a beaten path, even though it was made
centuries ago. They are welcome to this freak. "Our own genius
for adventure is less highly developed and we love to wander
along some beaten path, no matter how often it has been traveled
before; and if really awake, we may daily greet new beauties and
think new thoughts, and return to the old highway with a new
lease on life, which, after all, is the main consideration,
whether traveling on old or new trails."
Then the force of those old associations, how they gild the most
ordinary objects!
