What is this life but a whirling tide of pleasure and pain—glowing with gladness, darkening with grief, leaping with rapture, eddying with tears, now kissing the smiling cliffs of hope, now dashing against the frowning crags of fear and then vanishing in the darkness! What would it all be worth to us unblessed by love and mercy and the milk of human kindness? What would it all be worth to us bereft of music, that noblest gift of the soul? The spirit of music, like an archangel, presides over mankind and the visible creation. Her afflatus, divinely sweet, divinely powerful, is breathed on every heart and inspires every soul to some higher thought, some grander sentiment. I heard a great master play on his wondrous violin. His bow quivered like the wing of a bird. In every quiver there was a melody, and every melody breathed a thought in language sweeter than was ever uttered by human tongue. I was conjured, I was mesmerized by his music. I thought I fell asleep under its power and was rapt into the realms of visions and dreams. The enchanted violin broke out in tumult, and in its music I thought I heard the rustle of a thousand joyous wings and the burst of song from a thousand joyous throats; mocking-birds and linnets thrilled the glad air with warblings; goldfinches, thrushes and bobolinks trilled their happiest tunes and the oriole sang a lullaby to her hanging cradle that rocked in the wind. I heard the twitter of skimming swallows, the scattered coveys’ piping call. I heard the robin’s gay whistle, the cawing of crows, the scolding of blue-jays and the melancholy cooing of a dove. The swaying tree tops seemed vocal with bird song while he played, and the labyrinths of leafy shade echoed back the chorus. There was a shifting of the bow, and I heard a flute play and a harp and a golden-mouthed cornet. I heard the mirthful babble of happy voices and peals of laughter ringing in the swelling tide of pleasure. Then I thought I caught glimpses of snowy arms, voluptuous forms and light, fantastic slippered feet all whirling in the mazes of the misty dance. The flying fingers now tripped upon the trembling strings like fairy feet dancing on the nodding violets, and the music glided into a still sweeter strain. The violin told a story of human life: Two lovers strayed among the elms and oaks and down by the river side where daffodils and pansies bend and smile to rippling waves, and there, under the bloom of incense-breathing bowers, the old, old story—so old and yet so new, conceived in heaven, first told in Eden, then handed down through all the ages,—was told over and over again. Ah! those downward drooping eyes, that mantling blush, that trembling hand in meek submission pressed! How well they told of love’s victory won and Paradise regained! And then he swung her in a grape-vine swing: