READING TO MUSIC


"Silence was pleased."

As I lounged at mine ease on the veranda, serenely content with the pages
of a favourite author, I became conscious of an unusual sound-vague,
continuous, rhythmic. Disinclined to permit my thoughts to wander from
the text, at the back of my mind a dim sensation of uneasiness, almost of
resentment, because of the slight audible intrusion betrayed itself.
Close, as firmly as I could, my mental ear the sound persisted
externally, softly but undeniably. Having overcome the first sensation of
uneasiness, I studied the perfect prose without pausing to reflect on
the origin of the petty disturbance. In a few minutes the annoyance--if
the trivial distraction deserved so harsh an epithet--changed, giving
place to a sense of refined pleasure almost as fatal to my complacency,
for it compelled me to think apart. What was this new pleasure? Ah! I was
reading to an accompaniment--a faint, far-off improvisation just on the
verge of silence, too scant and elusive for half-hearted critical
analysis.

This reading of delightful prose, while the tenderest harmony hummed in
my cars, was too rare to be placidly enjoyed. Frail excitement foreign to
the tranquil pages could not be evaded. The most feeble and indeterminate
of sounds, those which merely give a voice to the air eventually, quicken
the pulse.

An eloquent and learned man says that the mechanical operation of sounds
in quickening the circulation of the blood and the spirits has more