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"Hey, Hen!" cried the station master, waving a yellow paper. "Here's a telegraph despatch for you." It was really for Nan, and from Papa Sherwood filed just before the Afton Castle sailed from New York: "Momsey and papa send love and kisses. Be cheerful and good. Write often. We think of you always. Kind wishes for Henry, Kate and boys. We look forward to fair voyage and safe landing.
By and by we came to the Nith, which afterward we did not leave; and through a green glen wound the "sweet Afton" Burns wrote of and loved almost as dearly as he loved its elder brother. Here in this valley, companioned with his own starry thoughts, he walked and rode, happy in his fellowship with Nature, even though poverty made him an exciseman at fifty pounds a year.
Jack lay back in the hammock, and with wonderful tenderness and feeling sang "Afton Water," repeating the last verse several times over. It was plain that something in it, some phrase or line, had deeply moved him, for he suddenly bent over and laid his face in his hands, shaking with a strange emotion.
She would commence her scream directly she brought her lunch out, but as soon as she found it only served to make the dogs more promptly on time, she gave it up. I have had a good deal of amusement, one way or another, but Maria stands at the head of the list in my memory. I made the acquaintance of a married couple at Afton.
"That ought to do," she said, abruptly swinging around on the piano stool to face them. "The rhythm is good and I love the tune." Polly and Angela considered for a moment. "It is rather nice," Polly agreed, "if we can only find words to fit it." "That's easy, use the same idea as the song," Betty suggested. "Supplement Hudson for Afton, and " "Oh, Bet, how can you?" Angela's poetic taste objected.
I also, in 1620, erected the mansion at Afton, then, and even now, the most superb in that neighbourhood, fit to grace the leading title of nobility; but you forbad my successors to enter. I joined, in 1647, to our vast fortune, the manor of Erdington. Thus the fabric we have been rearing for ages, you overthrew in one fatal moment." The last angry spectre would appear in the bloom of life.
In connection with this step the practice of melodies is useful, if one has musical taste. Simple, familiar melodies are best such as "The Last Rose of Summer," "Annie Laurie," "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton," etc., etc. The importance of rhythm is well expressed by Emerson, who said that the rhythm of Shakespeare's verse was always the outcome of the thought.
In the locality of Harpersville and Nineveh a broad plain had been settled by a colony of emigrants called "the Vermont Sufferers," from their having formerly occupied land which was claimed by both Massachusetts and New York. Three miles above Nineveh lies Afton, just on the edge of Chenango county, and a short distance above are Sidney, in Delaware county, and Otego, in Otsego county.
With a sort of military sixth sense, he felt that he had been asked to break bread and eat salt with a slacker, and he resented it. After dinner Drusilla sang for them. Sensitive always to atmosphere, she soothed the Captain with old and familiar songs, "Flow gently, sweet Afton," and "Believe me if all those endearing young charms."
"Flow Gently, Sweet Afton" followed; and he closed with "Auld Lang Syne." Then he laid the violin carefully on the table and burst into tears. For two or three minutes nobody spoke. Filippo was weeping silently; Percy cleared his throat; and even the other three were conscious of a slight huskiness. The evening was turning out differently from what they had anticipated.
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