Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/206

192 sleeping," he sang, though in a low voice and quite cheerfully. Indeed his entire repertoire of ballads was confined to the saddest themes, chiefly of desirable maidens taken off untimely either by disease or accident. Besides "Rosalie, the Prairie Flower," there was "Lovely Annie Lisle," over whom the willows waved and earthly music could not waken; another named "Sweet Alice Ben Bolt" lying in the churchyard, and still another, "Lily Dale," who was pictured "'neath the trees in the flowery vale," with the wild rose blossoming o'er the little green grave.

His face was indeed sad as he rendered these woful ballads and yet his voice and manner were of the cheeriest, and I dare say he sang without reference to their real tragedy. It was a school of American balladry quite at variance with the cheerful optimism of those I had heard from the Belknap-Jackson phonograph, where the persons are not dead at all but are gayly calling upon one another to come on and do a folkdance, or hear a band or crawl under—things of that sort. As Cousin Egbert bent over a frying-pan in which ham was cooking he crooned softly:

I could attribute his choice only to that natural perversity which prompted him always to do the wrong thing, for surely this affecting verse was not meant to be sung at such a moment.

Attempting to arise, I became aware that the two days' journey had left me sadly lame and wayworn, also that my