AN UNAMBITIOUS GOLD MINE

...This one brief spell of the angelus is usually the only silent time in the evening...

...Again and again he would crumple the paper angrily and pick up his fiddle, would find himself in no mood for playing,*and would go on mending shoes...

...As he learned broken phrases in English and began to go about on various errands, he often came up the Bowery on the elevated railroad at the hour when all the lights of the evening are beginning to flash...

...And so it the end of some six months he had learned to read...

...He did good careful work, and he worked hard and long, from seven o'clock in the morning till six o'clock at night...

...he asked irritably...

...For each, from her own point of view, thought that Johan's playing sounded exceedingly young...

...And he was amazed at the change that had come...

...They always came at different times...

...The ferry boat had docked, and in a dense, black, struggling mob the crowd was pressing to the bow But Johan never moved...

...He had brought a violin from Bavaria...

...It always spoiled his evening...

...From time to time, from somewhere up on one of her funnels, a snowy puff of smoke would rise, and an instant later her voice would come, deep, almost sepulchral, commanding to make way...

...No distant masses here...

...And then he would go on mending shoes...

...He was short and bent to one side by the weight of the pack which was slung to his shoulder...

...Well...

...A fine little girl," he had called her...

...He listened with an expression half amused and half ashamed, nervously twisting his thin moustache...

...Back in his shop, he tried to play the phrases which he remembered...

...Late that night, back in the shop, Fritz heard his brother play...

...It takes newspapers, press agents, hard-headed managers, to find out...

...I am sick of this...

...I don't know," said Johan...

...Jake's eyes at the time were by no means shut, they were open wide— and even just a trifle moist, for he was only twelve years old...

...The silence endures till the bell has ceased its tolling...

...These were a few of the things the city thought of his playing...

...and the sound of the old fiddle could be heard for only a few feet away...

...Fritz stared...

...JOHAN was now about thirty years old...

...The North River and the harbor for miles around was a twinkling panorama, and the air was alive with the smell of the sea and pierced by endless harbor calls...

...his hair, which was of yellowish grey with here and there a patch of white, hung disheveled over his ears...

...This was why old Mike Donovan the drunkard, and the woman who had eight children and the woman who had none, the honest-eyed young clerk and little "Jake De Twinkler" and the plain-faced girl with reddish hair—had stopped outside to listen...

...A great white ocean liner was steaming slowly in...

...The human yarns were what absorbed him most: the things that had happened on the streets and in the houses of his "neighbors" since the night before: the comic ones, the grim ones, the thrilling ones: now chuckling, now scowling, he slowly read them through...

...Vaguely he could feel that the men who had created this music must have listened long, as he himself had listened, to the human millions: now in cool serene old gardens, with the angelus softly tolling...

...Crude seemed his playing now...

...She could tell exactly how Johan must look as he played, for she had often taken her shoes to his shop...

...he muttered...

...But he was not thinking, his mind was too sodden with liquor to think...

...Soon he was going to concerts two or three nights every week...

...This fact had been stated to him again and again, with absolute conviction, by his brother Fritz, who was brisk and shrewd and kept a shoe store 'round the corner...

...And at first he was keenly delighted...

...But Johan had refused to go...

...And what they had said had made brother Fritz so intensely excited that he had overcome all his habits of thrift and of saving, had offered to lend one-half of his fortune, a sum amounting to ninety-six dollars, to Johan, that he might, go to Munich and "learn all the tricks," and make himself rich and famous...

...How, as time went on, his four million neighbors forced their way into his thoughts and feelings, is impossible to describe, for Johan could not have told you himself...

...After that, he had come out to the corner almost every night, had bought a paper and taken it back to his shop...

...Coming home one evening, Johan had heard his voice, had stopped, the crowd had jostled him into a doorway, and there he had stood for some moments...

...He knew so little about them that he thought Johan the fiddler knew, which was quite the opposite of the truth...

...But Johan did not hear him...

...It is true that old Mike Donovan, a veteran of the district, would often stop in front of the shop and would stand there for a long time, swaying slightly, now chuckling, now frowning in such a way that you might have supposed he was thinking hard...

...But in the garden where Johan played, there had been many silent spells...

...I will supply all the money you need, we will find a splendid teacher, the best one in the city—" He stopped...

...He could not...

...And then he would begin to play...

...So don't talk of this again...

...and therein his bed he would lie awake for hours in the dark where nobody could see him—thinking about women...

...You could hear him stir up the coals in the stove...

...And staring down out of the darkness, his huge hands now gripping tight the iron rail before him, now lying relaxed on his knees—Johan listened spellbound...

...And on the morrow as he sat at his work, some of the yarns would come up in his mind, would take fast hold...

...But of what he had seen or felt, he had given no visible sign...

...Listening outside, she felt that his thoughts and his passions were simply tremendous, that he was surely a genius...

...He simply drifted, as in a dream...

...But sooner or later a night would come, when as though the distant voice of the old news vender had some strange magnetic power, Johan would rise abruptly, go out and buy a paper...

...Sometimes he would laugh, in a low but almost startled tone, and would walk quickly "home" to his boarding house room...

...At first he thought almost nothing at all...

...And it had been the same with many other sights and sounds...

...and again on the mighty harbor at night, where lights flashed out by thousands and the great, white, gleaming ship moved slowly onward, commanding to make way...

...She spoke German, and had helped him several times with his English...

...Fritz would ask indignantly...

...you could see their eyes, you could hear their voices...

...Some Munich students tramping that way had heard him play one evening...

...One autumn evening about five o'clock, he was on a ferry boat with Fritz, returning from a wholesale place where they had bought some leather cheap...

...But Johan, who was huge of limb and slow of tongue, would only smile, or scowl, or stare absent-mindedly out of the window, according to the mood he was in, until at last his brother's exhortation should come to an end...

...He had brought an opera glass...

...What are they all in such a hurry about...

...JOHAN read so slowly that he rarely ever reached the rear pages of the paper...

...Almost every night he had played in his small three-cornered shop...

...Neither one was sentimental, but sometimes over the face of each would creep a look half grim and half maternal...

...you could see their faces, smiling, frowning, worried and tense or jovial and beaming...

...But after supper he would come back to the shop, pull down the wooden shutter (which descended with a prodigious rattle) until from the street you could see only his legs...

...Johan, what is the matter with you...

...and the talking and laughter go on as before...

...and as he cried his wares, news of what had happened in this colossal "neighborhood" since the night before, his strident bellowing voice seemed to dominate all other sounds...

...For the city of Greater New York is not like a Bavarian garden...

...On this corner stood an old man selling papers...

...Then the burgomaster turns to his neighbor and cries "Guten Abend...

...By reaching the hall at seven o'clock he secured a front seat in the center of the top gallery...

...It is hard to live next door to such an unambitious gold mine...

...He did not like to come by the shop, but half the time he did not know where he was going, he was there before he knew it, and once there he had to stay...

...And some of the gropin^s, the thoughts and feelings he had those days found their way into his music...

...She was only twenty-two and small for her age...

...and another woman, still more tired (and even worse than tired) who had none...

...But the playing continued...

...But there had been times, standing here alone, when even this deft mind of his had become fearfully tangled...

...A plain-faced girl with soft reddish hair came now and then to listen...

...it teems with life, it clatters, it hums...

...Out of one such tangle had come this remark, which was made to himself in a whisper: "I could take his money wid my eyes shut...

...He had been whirled past the mouths of dark narrow streets, leading on the one side into the Italian quarter, on the other into the Ghetto, long tumultuous tides of black bobbing forms, which were men and women, boys and girls, homeward bound from work...

...That is hard to answer...

...I have been in scores of such places myself...

...his old slouch hat was usually tipped to the back of his head...

...and the rich, imposing scene below, the men in evening dress, the women and their gowns and jewels, the gay hubbub of voices, all rose like balm into his soul, like a dream cf a promised land...

...And there were many evenings when he did not play at all...

...From time to time Fritz listened and swore softly to himself...

...From that night on, the matter was dropped...

...He would doubtless have stayed in the village, taken his father's place as the-village shoemaker, and played at night in the garden all the summers of his life, had it not been for his brother...

...It is hard to tell what the city thinks of any man's playing...

...Why are you waiting here'" Johan turned slowly, with a dazed half savage look He glanced down into the crowd below...

...Another occasional listener was a dark-faced little urchin whose name was "Jake De Twinkler," Jake had been a pickpocket ever since he could remember...

...again on the corners of city streets, where the faces swept past with such different looks in the eyes...

...AND WHAT did Johan think of the city...

...There was a corner by his shop which at the evening hour was almost completely filled, sidewalks, street and all...

...And at the end of another two weeks he selected a concert in Carnegie Hall...

...Fritz, becoming curious, went with his brother one night...

...Once more the old hope sprang into his eyes...

...When he did, he read with fast awakening eagerness...

...When at sundown the church bell of the village sounds the angelus, by a custom as old as the styles of their clothes, all stop talking, the men and boys take off their hats or caps, the stout burgomaster alone stands up and crosses himself...

...A place where the wooden tables and benches were heavy shaded hy huge-leaved chestnut trees, where the peasants, men, women and children, had sat in the summer evenings talking and laughing over their beer...

...and it was as though he were making rough charcoal sketches of the pictures he had seen...

...Angrily he winked them, and whistled hard as he walked away...

...I know...

...No more of this dull mending...

...For with what majesty, what passion, what light delicious mirth, what ineffable quiet, had these men who had listened put into their music the things which they had heard...

...You might be down on the stage yourself," he whispered, "playing a solo—famous, rich...

...I am getting along, I am happy, I don't see why you bother me...

...I tell you, Fritz, there is no use...

...Voices, trolley cars and wagons made an almost steady roar...

...Why don't you dig yourself up...

...By day he only mended shoes, and at night he played as though he had closed his eyes and were back in the laughing old garden...

...If I tried, I would only spoil what I have...

...Sitting motionless and huire at the car window, Johan had looked down upon these distant masses many nights...

...There was, too, a tired looking woman who had eight small children...

...And yet," she thought, smiling to herself in an almost ominous fashion, "how easily a wife could manage him, when once she had learned...

...I could never make a job of my fiddle...

...An insignificant, honest-eyed little clerk, who had lived for years in a boarding house down the block, came sometimes to listen...

...What did the city think of his playing...

...He read in groping fashion, running his calloused shoemaker thumb slowly down the column...

...For Johan, with his fiddle still under his chin, was regarding his brother with a mingled look of humor and annoyance...

...Leave me alone...

...When angrily pressed for a reason, he had shrunk into himself, and had muttered at last,— "It is dull to work with a fiddle...

...He was slow at learning to read English...

...Now," he cried, "you must get to work...

...Why not...

...Come on...

...cried Fritz impatiently...

...But as the music began, and he saw the look that stole into his brother's eyes, his own visage contracted in a disapproving frown...

...He felt it only vaguely...

...But Fritz was consumed by a passion for getting up in life, and he had at last persuaded Johan to come with him to New York...

...At once the heartiest greetings burst from every side...

...And so it happened that a year had gone before he noticed the column devoted to music...

...He had played it years before, in a certain ?nug old garden in the Bavarian foothills...

...He was indeed a "twinkler" with his fingers, and his mind moved even swifter...

...his cheeks were flushed, his small grey eyes exceedingly bright...

...cried Fritz...

...There would be a long silence...

...He did not stop to think it out...