For the period of quiescence as to
production, which followed the initiation of more orderly study,
was, after all, but of short duration, and the return tide of
musical utterance was stronger than ever. Mary's delight was
great when first he brought her one of his compositions very
fairly written out--after which others followed with a rapidity
that astonished her. They enabled her also to understand the man
better and better; for to have a thing to brood over which we are
capable of understanding must be more to us than even the
master's playing of it. She could not be sure this or that was
correct, according to the sweet inexorability of musical
ordainment, but the more she pondered them, the more she felt
that the man was original, that the material was there, and the
law at hand, that he brought his music from the only bottomless
well of utterance, the truth, namely, by which alone the soul
most glorious in gladness, or any other the stupidest of souls,
can live.
To the first he brought her she contrived to put a poor little
faulty accompaniment; and when she played his air to him so
accompanied, his delight was touching, and not a little amusing.
Plainly he thought the accompaniment a triumph of human faculty,
and beyond anything he could ever develop. Never pupil was more
humble, never pupil more obedient; thinking nothing of himself or
of anything he had done or could do, his path was open to the
swiftest and highest growth.
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