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My way home through the storm was rough and wet, but it was not lonely. The songs of the pines went with me, especially the tinkling xylophone dance music of the dryad, deep within the ancient trunk. It is fabled that nine hundred years ago the Norsemen riding the white horses of the shoals, dismounted upon Nantucket, its original European discoverers.
The boat of Yuara started, and once more the flotilla was on its way. For an hour or more it swung on among the forested hills before the telegraph instrument was put to use. Then it paused, and the sonorous voice of the xylophone spoke to the jungle. A period of waiting brought no reply. The canoe moved on for a mile. Again the mallets beat the wood in the ascending scale of the call.
I assure you that I cherish no resentment against Miss Perry. I was a fool, I suppose, ever to have let her influence me. I was pretty miserable at the time and she is a very attractive girl, and we men, well " "Man," said the Governor, "is only a xylophone upon which any woman may exercise her musical talents.
At first look I says to myself: 'One o' these high-fliers I've heard talk about that likes to fly low. Then I flings your eyes one penetrating peep, and says to myself: ''Spect she ain't one o' that kind. And I make out just this about you that you're O.K. from A to Xylophone, and I takes this opportunity to remark aloud to myself that I don't know what your game is, and it's none o' my haterogeneous business, but if I was you I'd cut Marrow Lane out o' my itenerary, and stay home nights playin' a quiet rubber o' tiddle winks-the-barber."
"I have been spared that necessity," said he, "but I know all about them, and I assert to you upon my honor as a courier and the best guide in the Archipelago that Jupiter is the worst old roué a country ever had saddled upon it; Apollo's music would drive you mad and make you welcome a xylophone duet; and as for Mercury's business capacity, that is merely a capacity for getting away from his creditors.
It may have been the dryad, playing the xylophone for a dance unseen by my gross mortal eyes, but if my water-logged ear did not deceive me and I hope it did it was only the beat of the big drops of rain on the twigs above, clarified and made resonant by its passage through the vibrant wood to my ear.
"Oh, yes," says he. "Here you are, then, Eggy," says I, reachin' into a pigeonhole and producin' it. "What's your instrument of torture, the xylophone?" "I I beg pardon?" says he. "Come now," says I, "don't tell me you're a trombone fiend!" "Oh, I see," says he. "No, no, I I'm not a musician." "Shake, Eggy!" says I, reachin' out my hand impulsive.
We expected trouble; but there wasn't any. The citizens saw that we had 'em. The nearest railroad was thirty miles away; and it would be two weeks at least before the river would be fordable. So they began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars on the bar till it sounded like a selection on the xylophone.
It had been reported by Tommy Dare, the leading Newport authority on monkeys, that he had heard him play Brahm's "Variations on Paganini" with his paws on a piano, "Hiawatha" on a xylophone with his feet, and "Home, Sweet Home" with his tail on a harp simultaneously, in Paris a year ago, and that alongside of Jockobinski all other musical prodigies of the age became mere strummers.
Soon the air resounds with the xylophone music of their chopping, the solid surf ace vibrating beneath the blows of the axe and giving forth a clear tintinnabulation which is most delightful to the ear.
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