A great river has all the sea's charm and much of its mystery and
sadness. The boy standing on the Kentucky shore was under this spell as
he listened to these sounds of nature at nightfall on the Ohio, and
watched the majestic sweep of its waters--unfettered and
unsullied--through the boundless and unbroken forests. Yet he turned
eagerly to listen to another sound that came from human-kind. It was the
wild music of the boatman's horn winding its way back from the little
ship, now far away and rounding the dusky bend. Partly flying and partly
floating, it stole softly up the shadowed river. The melody echoed from
the misty Kentucky hills, lingered under the overhanging trees, rambled
through the sighing cane-brakes, loitered among the murmuring
rushes--thus growing ever fainter, sweeter, wilder, sadder, as it came.
He did not know why this sound of the boatman's horn always touched him
so keenly and moved him so deeply. He could not have told why his eyes
grew strangely dim as he heard it now, or why a strange tightening came
around his heart. He was but an ignorant lad of the woods. It was not
for him to know that these few notes--so few, so simple, so artlessly
blown by a rude boatman--touched the deep fountain of the soul, loosing
the mighty torrent pent up in every human breast. Pity, tenderness,
yearning, the struggle and the triumph of life,--the boy felt everything
and all unknowingly, but with quivering sensibility. For he was not
merely an ignorant lad; he was also one of those who are set apart
throughout their lives to feel many things which they are never
permitted to comprehend.

When the last echo of the boatman's horn had melted among the darkling
hills, he turned as instinctively as a sun-worshipper faces the east and
drank in another musical refrain. The Angelus was pealing faintly from
the bell of the little log chapel far up the river, hidden among the
trees. The faith which it betokened was not his own faith, nor the faith