the portraits of the parties concerned in it
in a manner startlingly lifelike. You will, however, agree with me that
diverting memories also have the power of strangely moving the mind
when they suddenly spring up in this extraordinary and unexpected way,
as if awakened by the wave of a magician's wand. That's the case with
me just now." "What! a scene out of your own life!" exclaimed Edward,
quite astonished. "Do you mean to say the picture represents an episode
in your own life? I saw at once that the two ladies and the priest were
eminently successful portraits, but I never for a moment dreamed that
you had ever come across them in the course of your life. Come now,
tell me all about it, how it all came about; we are quite alone, nobody
else will come at this time o' day." "Willingly," answered Theodore,
"but unfortunately I must go a long way back--to my early youth in
fact." "Never mind; fire away," rejoined Edward; "I don't know over
much about your early days. If it lasts a good while, nothing worse
will happen than that we shall have to empty a bottle more than we at
first bargained for; and to that nobody will have any objection,
neither we, nor Mr. Tarone."

"That, throwing everything else aside, I at length devoted myself
entirely to the noble art of music," began Theodore, "need excite
nobody's astonishment, for whilst still a boy I would hardly do
anything else but play, and spent hours and hours strumming on my
uncle's old creaking, jarring piano. The little town was very badly
provided for music; there was nobody who could give me instruction
except an old opinionated organist; he, however, was merely a dry
arithmetician, and plagued me to death with obscure, unmelodious
toccatas and fugues. But I held on bravely, without letting myself be
daunted. The old fellow was crabby, and often found a good deal of
fault, but he had only to play a good piece in his own powerful style,
and I was at once reconciled both with him and with his art. I was then
often in a curious state of mind; many pieces particularly of old
Sebastian Bach were almost like a fearful ghost-story, and I yielded
myself up to that feeling of pleasurable awe to which we are so prone
in the days of our fantastic youth. But I entered into a veritable Eden
when, as sometimes happened in winter, the bandmaster of the town and
his colleagues, supported by a few other moderate dilettante players,
gave a concert, and I, owing to the strict time I