Auld Lang Syne: Selections from the Papers of the "Pen and Pencil Club"Various
General
Auld Lang Syne: Selections from the Papers of the "Pen and Pencil Club"
Various
Literature; Poetry
We were guided through a back way, intricate and uneven, where our blind
guide warned us carefully of every step—though he said the children ran
about everywhere and never fell—till we went through the school and
entered his little house alongside, and found ourselves in a bright
little parlour upstairs, full of books, and tastefully furnished, with a
woman’s taste; for the woman who survived the accident which left her
childless and crippled, had still the sight of one eye. There was an
harmonium in the room, and one of the children came to play it. He was
called Abraham; but this old name belonged to an intelligent,
bright-faced English lad of twelve, well dressed and handsome but for his
sad dim eyes. He is the son of a well-to-do farmer, and in education and
intelligence far removed from some of his companions. He handled the
harmonium with his small, delicate fingers as only a real musician can,
and while the music lasted I nearly forgot all the sadness of the scene,
and the hopeless life of the musician and the other children, who, one by
one, guided by the sound, crept up the narrow stairs and came noiselessly
into the room, and stood listening spell-bound till he finished. “And
now, Lizzie, play,” said some one, and a girl came to the harmonium. She
knew far less of music than Abraham, and had as yet little execution, but
the sweet, true feeling which she gave to the old hymn tunes stirred the
heart and brought tears to my eyes. “And would you like to hear us sing
the hymn we sang when she was buried?” they asked. For their
benefactress and friend, the woman whose untiring energy had begun and
carried on this work among them, rousing sympathy for them among her
townspeople, and begging for them when her own means were insufficient,
died a few weeks ago, and the children of the school had seen her laid in
the churchyard. The harmonium was hushed, Lizzie only struck the
keynote, and they all sang, as they had all sung at the grave in the cold
February morning when they saw her lowered into the cold earth,
“I know there is a land where all is bright,”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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