Page:Flute and Violin and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances.djvu/26

 poor always, and always the poorer because of a spend-thrift habit in the matter of secret charities; kneeling down by his small hard bed every morning and praying that during the day his logical faculty might discharge its function morally, and that his moral faculty might discharge its function logically, and that over all the operations of all his other faculties he might find heavenly grace to exercise both a logical and a moral control; at night kneeling down again to ask forgiveness that, despite his prayer of the morning, one or more of these same faculties—he knew and called them all familiarly by name, being a metaphysician—had gone wrong in a manner the most abnormal, shameless, and unforeseen; thus, on the whole, a man shy and dry; gentle, lovable; timid, resolute; forgetful, remorseful; eccentric, impulsive, thinking too well of every human creature but himself; an illogical logician, an erring moralist, a wool-gathered philosopher, but, humanly speaking, almost a perfect man.

But the magic flute? Ah, yes! The magic flute!

Well, the parson had a flute—a little one—and the older he grew, and the more patient and dreamy his gray eyes, always the more and more devotedly he blew this little friend. How the fond soul must have loved it! They say that during his last days as he lay propped high on white pillows, once, in a moment of wandering consciousness, he stretched forth his hand and in fancy lifting it from the white counterpane, carried it gently to his lips. Then, as his long, delicate fingers traced out the spirit ditties of no tone and his mouth pursed itself in the fashion of one who is softly blowing, his whole face was overspread with a halo of ecstatic peace.

And yet, for all the love he bore it, the parson was