It Had Been Rumoured Since Friday That There Was A Fiddler Aboard,
Who Lay Sick And Unmelodious In Steerage No.
1; and on the Monday
forenoon, as I came down the companion, I was saluted by something
in Strathspey time.
A white-faced Orpheus was cheerily playing to
an audience of white-faced women. It was as much as he could do to
play, and some of his hearers were scarce able to sit; yet they had
crawled from their bunks at the first experimental flourish, and
found better than medicine in the music. Some of the heaviest
heads began to nod in time, and a degree of animation looked from
some of the palest eyes. Humanly speaking, it is a more important
matter to play the fiddle, even badly, than to write huge works
upon recondite subjects. What could Mr. Darwin have done for these
sick women? But this fellow scraped away; and the world was
positively a better place for all who heard him. We have yet to
understand the economical value of these mere accomplishments. I
told the fiddler he was a happy man, carrying happiness about with
him in his fiddle-case, and he seemed alive to the fact.
'It is a privilege,' I said. He thought a while upon the word,
turning it over in his Scots head, and then answered with
conviction, 'Yes, a privilege.'
That night I was summoned by 'Merrily danced the Quake's wife' into
the companion of Steerage No.
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