"Oh, begone!" said he. "See you do not trouble me again, lest I prove
better citizen next time and rid the country of you once and for all."
Scarcely had the words left his lips than the cowed ruffians made off
so hastily that they might have vanished into thin air.
"And now, sir," said my companion, carefully uncocking the pistol ere
he pocketed it, "let us continue our so agreeable conversation. A
crowd of humans, sir, to my mind is a mystery deep as ocean, sublime
as the starry firmament, for who shall divine the thoughts, hopes,
passions and desires animating its many various and component
entities? Moreover, though composed of many different souls, it may
yet possess but one in common, to be swayed to mirth and anger, lifted
to a reverent ecstasy or fired to bloody vengeance and merciless
destruction. What is there can give any just conception of a mystery
so complex?"
"Surely nothing, sir," said I.
"Nay, young sir, therein I venture to think you are wrong, for we
possess a divine joy, a soul medium, a very gift of God and we call
it,--music, sir. To such as have ears, music is the speech of Gods, of
the Infinite, soaring far above mere words, revealing the unconceived,
speaking forth the unthinkable."
"And what, sir, is the unthinkable?" I questioned.
"That which flashes upon a man's consciousness without the labour of
thought, an intimate cognizance of--What the devil is it now,
Atkinson?" he broke off so suddenly that I started and, glancing up,
beheld an extremely neat, grave, sedate personage who removed his hat
to bow, and advancing deferentially, stooped sleek head to murmur
discreetly in my aged companion's ear.
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