The Choir Invisible | Page 5

invisible of the immortal dead. But there is something left of him
though more than a century has passed away: something that has
wandered far down the course of time to us like the faint summer
fragrance of a young tree long since fallen dead in its wintered
forest--like a dim radiance yet travelling onward into space from an orb
turned black and cold--like an old melody, surviving on and on in the
air without any instrument, without any strings.
John Gray, the school-master. At four o'clock that afternoon and
therefore earlier than usual, he was standing on the hickory block
which formed the doorstep of the school-house, having just closed the
door behind him for the day. Down at his side, between the thumb and
forefinger of one hand, hung his big black hat, which was decorated

with a tricoloured cockade, to show that he was a member of the
Democratic Society of Lexington, modelled after the Democratic
Society of Philadelphia and the Jacobin clubs of France. In the open
palm of the other lay his big silver English lever watch with a glass
case and broad black silk fob.
A young fellow of powerful build, lean, muscular; wearing simply but
with gentlemanly care a suit of black, which was relieved around his
wrists and neck by linen, snow-white and of the finest quality. In
contrast with his dress, a complexion fresh, pure, brilliant--the
complexion of health and innocence; in contrast with this complexion
from above a mass of coarse dark-red hair, cut short and loosely curling.
Much physical beauty in the head, the shape being noble, the pose full
of dignity and of strength; almost no beauty in the face itself except in
the gray eyes which were sincere, modest, grave. Yet a face not without
moral loftiness and intellectual power; rugged as a rock, but as a rock is
made less rugged by a little vine creeping over it, so his was softened
by a fine network of nerves that wrought out upon it a look of kindness;
betraying the first nature of passion, but disciplined to the higher nature
of control; youthful, but wearing those unmistakable marks of maturity
which mean a fierce early struggle against the rougher forces of the
world. On the whole, with the calm, self respecting air of one who,
having thus far won in the battle of life, has a fiercer longing for larger
conflict, and whose entire character rests on the noiseless conviction
that he is a man and a gentleman.
Deeper insight would have been needed to discover how true and
earnest a soul he was; how high a value he set on what the future had in
store for him and on what his life would be worth to himself and to
others; and how, liking rather to help himself than to be helped, he
liked less to be trifled with and least of all to be seriously thwarted.
He was thinking, as his eyes rested on the watch, that if this were one
of his ordinary days he would pursue his ordinary duties; he would go
up street to the office of Marshall and for the next hour read as many
pages of law as possible; then get his supper at his favourite tavern--the
Sign of the Spinning, Wheel--near the two locust trees; then walk out

into the country for an hour or more; then back to his room and more
law until midnight by the light of his tallow dip.
But this was not an ordinary day--being one that he had long waited for
and was destined never to forget. At dusk the evening before, the
post-rider, so tired that he had scarce strength of wind to blow his horn,
had ridden into town bringing the mail from Philadelphia; and in this
mail there was great news for him. It had kept him awake nearly all of
the night before; it had been uppermost in his mind the entire day in
school. At the thought of it now he thrust his watch into his pocket,
pulled his hat resolutely over his brow, and started toward Main Street,
meaning to turn thence toward Cross Street, now known as Broadway.
On the outskirts of the town in that direction lay the wilderness,
undulating away for hundreds of miles like a vast green robe with
scarce a rift of human making.
He failed to urge his way through the throng as speedily as he may
have expected, being withheld at moments by passing acquaintances,
and at others pausing of his own choice to watch some spectacle of the
street.
The feeling lay fresh upon him this afternoon that not many years back
the spot over which the town was spread had been but a hidden glade in
the heart of the