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Edwald looked a while with wonder in his face, and he answered kindly: "Beloved Froda, if it displeases you, I will surely sing no more." But at the same time he struck a few sad chords, which sounded infinitely sweet and tender. Then the northern knight, much moved, clasped him in his arms, and said: "Dear Edchen, sing and say and do whatever pleases you; it shall ever rejoice me.

"Oh, I can only play the chords, and not all of them right " and he took Simmons's seat. "Perhaps I can get through I'll try it," he added, simply, and squared himself before the instrument and began the melody. The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, 'Tis summer, the darkies are gay. The corn-top's ripe and the meadow is in bloom, While the birds make music all the day.

She ran to the piano as to a refuge, meaning to drown out these maddening speculations, which were by this time tinctured with insanity; but the first chords she struck jarred on her ear like a discordant scream. She turned away and stood looking at the floor with a darkening face, one hand at her temple.

The human soul may be compared to those instruments, of which the chords, already diversified in themselves, by the manner in which they have been spun, are also strung upon different notes: struck by the same impulse, each chord gives forth the sound that is peculiar to itself; that is to say, that which depends on its texture, its tension, its volume, on the momentary state in which it is placed by the circumambient air.

The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."* *Lincoln VI, 184; N. & H., III, 343. Seward advised the omission of part of the original draft of the first of these two paragraphs.

Tresfarwin dozed and blinked and dozed again and on her left Aynesworth himself, a little affected by the music, still found time to glance continually at his companion, so radiant with life and so fervently intent upon realizing to the full this, the first of its unknown joys. So with crashing of chords and thunder of melody the act went on.

A brief strain in the wind in ardent temper is followed by another in the strings, and still a third in joint strings and wood. As the horns had preluding chords to the whole song, so a single horn sings a kind of epilogue amid harmony of strings and other horns. Slowly a more vigorous pulse is stirred, in an interlude of retorting trumpets.

I saw his white fingers busy among the many stops, then his slim hands fell upon the keys and forth gushed a torrent of sweet sound, a peal of triumphant joy that thrilled me; great, rolling chords beneath and through which rippled an ecstasy of silvery notes, whose magic conjured to my imagination a dew-spangled morning joyous with sun and thrilling with the glad song of birds new-waked, a green and golden world wherein one sped to meet me, white arms outstretched in love, one herself as fresh and sweet as the morning.

The sentence is what we might have expected from the head and heart of the man who wrote the final sentence of the first inaugural address: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Homer took possession of the thought with the ardour of inspiration. He immediately unslung his guitar, and began to draw his fingers rapidly over the strings, swinging his body from side to side, and striking fine and impressive chords.