sat in the opposite corner knitting:


"Of old Antonio Stradivari--him
Who a good century and a half ago
Put his true work in the brown instrument,
And by the nice adjustment of its frame
Gave it responsive life, continuous
With the master's finger-tips, and perfected
Like them by delicate rectitude of use."


The mother listened with painful intentness. "I like the sound of
it," she said, "but I can't hardly say I take in the full sense."

"Why, mother," said the lad, in a rare moment of self-expression,
"you know the poetry says he cherished his sight and touch by
temperance; that an idiot might see a straggling line and be content,
but he had an eye that winced at false work, and loved the true.
When it says his finger-tips were perfected by delicate rectitude of
use, I think it means doing everything as it is done in heaven, and
that anybody who wants to make a perfect violin must keep his eye
open to all the beautiful things God has made, and his ear open to
all the music he has put into the world, and then never let his hands
touch a piece of work that is crooked or straggling or false, till,
after years and years of rightness, they are fit to make a violin
like the squire's, a violin that can say everything, a violin that an
angel wouldn't be ashamed to play on."

Do these words seem likely ones to fall from the lips of a lad who