used to jump over it and admire its proportions whenever they went
fishing at the Point. The wood, therefore, was perhaps eighty or
ninety years old. The squire agreed willingly that it should be used
to mend the ancient violin, and told Tony he should have what was
left for himself. When, by careful calculation, he found that the
remainder would make a whole violin, he laid it reverently away for
another twenty years, so that he should be sure it had completed its
century of patient waiting for service, and falling on his knees by
his bedside said, "I thank Thee, Heavenly Father, for this precious
gift, and I promise from this moment to gather the most beautiful
wood I can find, and lay it by where it can be used some time to make
perfect violins, so that if any creature as poor and as helpless as I
am needs the wherewithal to do good work, I shall have helped him as
Thou hast helped me." And according to his promise so he did, and
the pieces of richly curled maple, of sycamore, and of spruce began
to accumulate. They were cut from the sunny side of the trees, in
just the right season of the year, split so as to have a full inch
thickness towards the bark, and a quarter-inch towards the heart.
They were then laid for weeks under one of the falls in Wine Brook,
where the musical tinkle, tinkle of the stream fell on the wood
already wrought upon by years of sunshine and choruses of singing
birds.

This boy, toiling not alone for himself, but with full and conscious
purpose for posterity also, was he not worthy to wear the mantle of
Antonius Stradivarius?


"That plain white-aproned man who stood at work
Patient and accurate full fourscore years,