to Boston and
Philadelphia. The result was more or less the same. Soul flew in one
direction; mind in another; and, inert before the players--a little fat
man, perspiring, weeping, ecstatic. What came of it, he had told
Bedient in this way:

"The _Hatteras_ was to sail at night-fall, but on that morning I went
into a music-store, not knowing what I wanted exactly,--but a souvenir
of some kind, a book about orchestras. It appears, I told a man there
how I'd been philanderin' with the musicians; how I had caught them in
an off day at Springfield, Mass., and bought cornucopias of Pilsner
until they would have broken down and wept had they not been near their
instruments.... It was a big music-store, and he was a very good man.
He sold me the orchestrelle that morning. You think I had an electric
plant installed down here to light the house and drive my sugar-mill,
don't you? It wasn't that at all, but to run the big music-box yonder.
The man had smoothly attached a current, but he said I could just as
well pump it with my feet. Then he called in a church organist--to
drive the stops. Between them, they got me where I was all run down
from that orchestra crowd. They said a child could learn the stops....
You should have heard my friends on the _Hatteras_--when the
orchestrelle was put aboard that afternoon. They never forget that.
Then we had a triple ox-cart made down in Coral City, and four span
were goaded up the trail--and there she stands.

"Andrew, they finally left me alone with it and a couple of hundred
music-rolls.... It was hours after, that I came forth a sick man to
cable for power.... About those music-rolls--I had called for the best.
One does that blind, you know. But the best in music matters, it
appears, has nothing to do with retired sea-captains.... It's a pretty
piece of furniture. The orchestra had died out of me by the time we had
the electric-plant going.... I take it you have to be caught young to
deal with those stops.... You go after it, Andrew. It scares me and the
natives when it begins to pipe up. I had a time getting my household
back that first time. Maybe, I didn't touch the right button--or
I touched too many. You go after it, my boy--it's all
there--_appassionato--oboe--'consharto'--vox humana_ and the whole
system--"

... It is hard for one to realize how little music Bedient had heard in
his life. Just a few old songs--always unfinished--but they had haunted
the depths of him, and