THE AUTOMATON EAR, AND OTHER SKETCHES. BY FLORENCE McLANDBURGH. CHICAGO: JANSEN, McCLURG & CO. 1876. COPYRIGHT, BY FLORENCE McLANDBURGH, A. D. 1876. [Illustration: _LAKESIDE PUBLISHING & PRINTING CO. CHICAGO._] Dedicated TO JOHN McLANDBURGH. NOTE.—Some of the sketches and tales in this volume were contributed to “Scribner’s Monthly,” “Appleton’s Journal,” and the “Lakeside Magazine,” and are used here, in a revised form, by the kind permission of the editors. Others appear now for the first time. F. McL. CHICAGO, _April, 1876_. [Illustration] CONTENTS. PAGE THE AUTOMATON EAR, 7 THE PATHS OF THE SEA, 44 REINHART, THE GERMAN, 89 SILVER ISLET, 103 BOYDELL, THE STROLLER, 129 THE DEATH-WATCH, 149 THE MAN AT THE CRIB, 161 PROF. KELLERMANN’S FUNERAL, 183 THE FEVERFEW, 201 OLD SIMLIN, THE MOULDER, 213 THE ANTHEM OF JUDEA, 243 [Illustration] [Illustration] THE AUTOMATON EAR. The day was hardly different from many another day, though I will likely recall it even when the mist of years has shrouded the past in an undefined hueless cloud. The sunshine came in at my open window. Out of doors it flooded all the land in its warm summer light—the spires of the town and the bare college campus; farther, the tall bearded barley and rustling oats; farther still, the wild grass and the forest, where the river ran and the blue haze dipped from the sky. The temptation was greater than I could stand, and taking my book I shut up the “study,” as the students called my small apartment, leaving it for one bounded by no walls or ceiling. The woods rang with the hum and chirp of insects and birds. I threw myself down beneath a tall, broad-spreading tree. Against its moss-covered trunk I could hear the loud tap of the woodpecker secreted high up among its leaves, and off at the end of a tender young twig a robin trilled, swinging himself to and fro through the checkered sunlight. I never grew weary listening to the changeful voice of the forest and the river, and was hardly conscious of reading until I came upon this paragraph:—