the atmosphere was satiated with harmony. No more ethereal note ever
flew out of a bird's throat than Anthony Croft set free from this
violin, his liebling, his "swan song," made in the year he had lost
his eyesight.

Anthony Croft had been the only son of his mother, and she a widow.
His boyhood had been exactly like that of all the other boys in
Edgewood, save that he hated school a trifle more, if possible, than
any of the others; though there was a unanimity of aversion in this
matter that surprised and wounded teachers and parents.

The school was the ordinary district school of that time; there were
not enough scholars for what Cyse Higgins called a "degraded" school.
The difference between Anthony and the other boys lay in the reason
for as well as the degree of his abhorrence.

He had come into the world a naked, starving human soul; he longed to
clothe himself, and he was hungry and ever hungrier for knowledge;
but never within the four walls of the village schoolhouse could he
seize hold of one fact that would yield him its secret sense, one
glimpse of clear light that would shine in upon the darkness of his
mind, one thought or word that would feed his soul.

The only place where his longings were ever stilled, where he seemed
at peace with himself, where he understood what he was made for, was
out of doors in the woods. When he should have been poring over the
sweet, palpitating mysteries of the multiplication table, his vagrant
gaze was always on the open window near which he sat. He could never
study when a fly buzzed on the window-pane; he was always standing on
the toes of his bare feet, trying to locate and understand the buzz