Here is a scroll of ink-written music. I don't read music, but I know
the dash and swing of the pen that rained it on the page. Here is a
letter, with the self-same impulse and abandon in every syllable; and
its melody--however sweet the other--is far more sweet to me. And here
are other letters like it--three--five--and seven, at least. Bob wrote
them from the front, and Billy kept them for me when I went to join
him. Dear boy! Dear boy!
Here are some cards of bristol-board. Ah! when Bob came to these there
were no blotches then. What faces--what expressions! The droll,
ridiculous, good-for-nothing genius, with his "sad mouth," as he
called it, "upside down," laughing always--at everything, at big
rallies, and mass-meetings and conventions, county fairs, and floral
halls, booths, watermelon-wagons, dancing-tents, the swing,
Daguerrean-car, the "lung-barometer," and the air-gun man. Oh! what a
gifted, good-for-nothing boy Bob was in those old days! And here 's a
picture of a girlish face--a very faded photograph--even fresh from
"the gallery," five and twenty years ago it was a faded thing. But the
living face--how bright and clear that was!--for "Doc," Bob's awful
name for her, was a pretty girl, and brilliant, clever, lovable every
way.
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