City and town life -- Fiction; Urban poor -- Fiction
But though Jared no longer possessed a reflector in which he could gaze
and dream, and conjure up the past, yet one has a mirror of the mind
upon which, after a breath, the surface shines as I sit late this wintry
night, as Purkis sat of old in the dim shades of the gloomy old church,
listening to the inspiring music of the grand old organ, thundering in
peals, wailing in sighs, or pouring forth jubilant melody. For above me
in the distance, from behind a curtain suspended to a brass rod, rises a
faint glow as from some soft light, above which start up, like the
golden pillars dimly seen when the northern lights flush the wintry sky,
the mighty pipes whose summits are in the deep obscurity which clouds
the open roof of the edifice. And in my mirror what is there first? An
indelible picture? No; for it fades to give place to others, as now
there is visible Jared's patient lined old face poring over music-book
and keyboard by the light of one feeble candle which seems to shed a
halo round his quaint old head.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now the interior of the old church by day, with Jared at the organ. A
bright spring morning, and the organist in the morning costume of a
glossy black dress-coat and trousers--Tim Ruggles' cut for a ducat!--
white vest, and patent leather-boots. His grizzly hair has a peculiar
knotty appearance? and did any mirror reflect odours, most surely there
would be a smell of curling-tongs and singeing. There is a camellia,
too, in his button-hole, and he has just hurried up-stairs, splitting a
pair of white kid-gloves all to ribbons in dragging them off. Crash!
That's the brass curtain-rings on the rod, so that Jared can screw
himself round and gaze down into the church, now that he has taken a
music-book from the locker and placed it upon the stand of the opened
organ.
The sun streams through the tinted windows in golden and ruddy glories
piercing the sombre twilight of the church with rays whereon dance
myriad motes of dust--dust perhaps mingled with that of the generations
of the past. Jared is looking over the heads of many people anxiously
towards the chancel; and now seems to come a strange rushing sound, and
a dull creak, creak, which makes the towering old instrument to shudder.
But that is only Ichabod Gunnis, grown tall and out of leathers,
toiling away at the long handle of the bellows till the little weight
tells that the wind-chest is full.
And now here comes the party which Jared left in the vestry, for there
is a buzz of excitement in the church, and heads are craning, while Tim
Ruggles is so excited that he stands up on the cushions of the pew he
helps to occupy so as to have a better view of what is going on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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