United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
Paul believed that a thing worth doing at all was worth doing well. His
heart was in his work. It was a pleasure to sing. He loved music because
it made him happy, and he felt also that he and Azalia and Daphne and
all the choir were a power for good in the community to make men
better. Farmer Harrow, who used to work at haying on Sunday, said it was
worth a bushel of turnips any time to hear such sweet singing. So his
hired man and horses had rest one day in seven, and he became a better
man.
In the calm moonlight nights Paul often lay wide awake, hour after hour,
listening with rapture to the sweet music which came to him from the
distant woods, from the waterfall, from the old maple in front of the
house, when the leaves, tinged with gorgeous hues, were breaking one by
one from the twigs, and floating to the ground, from the crickets
chirping the last lone songs of the dying year, and from the robins and
sparrows still hovering around their summer haunts. It was sweet to
think of the pleasant hours he had passed with Azalia and Daphne, and
with all the choir; and then it was very pleasant to look into the
future, and imagine what bliss there might be in store for him;--a
better home for his mother in her declining years,--a better life for
himself. He would be a good citizen, respected and beloved. He would be
kind to all. He wished that all the world might be good and happy. When
he became a man, he would try and make people good. If everybody was as
good as Azalia, what a glorious world it would be! She was always good,
always cheerful. She had a smile for everybody. Her life was as warm and
sunny and golden as the October days, and as calm and peaceful as the
moonlight streaming across his chamber. Sweet it was to think of
her,--sweeter to see her; sweetest of all to stand by her side and unite
his voice to hers, and feel in his soul the charm of her presence. In
his dreams he sometimes heard her and sat by her side.
Sometimes, while thus lying awake, watching the stars as they went
sailing down the western sky, his thoughts went beyond the present into
the unseen future, whither his father and grandfather had gone. They
sang when on earth, and he thought of them as singing in heaven.
Sometimes he gazed so long and steadily toward the heavenly land, that
his eyes became dim with tears, so sweet and yet so sad the sounds he
seemed to hear,--so near and yet so far away that land.
So the days went by, and the calm and peaceful nights, bringing him to
October,--the glorious harvest month.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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