THE GOLDEN AGE
ished sense. Their happiness comes from the concord and the relative value of the notes they handle: the pure, absolute quality and nature of each note in itself are only appreciated by the strummer. For some notes have all the sea in them, and some cathedral bells; others a woodland joyance and a smell of greenery; in some fauns dance to the merry reed, and even the grave centaurs peep out from their caves. Some bring moonlight, and some the deep crimson of a rose's heart; some are blue, some red, while others will tell of an army with silken standards and march-music. And throughout all the sequence of suggestion, up above the little white men leap and peep, and strive against the imprisoning wires; and all the big rosewood box hums as it were full of hiving bees.
Spent with the rapture, I paused a moment and caught my friend's eye over the edge of a folio. 'But as for these Germans,' he began abruptly, as if we had been in the middle of a discussion, 'the scholarship is there, I grant you; but the spark, the fine perception, the
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