Partly flying and partly
floating, it stole softly up the shadowed river. The melody echoed from
the misty Kentucky hills, lingered under the overhanging trees, rambled
through the sighing cane-brakes, loitered among the murmuring
rushes--thus growing ever fainter, sweeter, wilder, sadder, as it came.
He did not know why this sound of the boatman's horn always touched him
so keenly and moved him so deeply. He could not have told why his eyes
grew strangely dim as he heard it now, or why a strange tightening came
around his heart. He was but an ignorant lad of the woods. It was not
for him to know that these few notes--so few, so simple, so artlessly
blown by a rude boatman--touched the deep fountain of the soul, loosing
the mighty torrent pent up in every human breast. Pity, tenderness,
yearning, the struggle and the triumph of life,--the boy felt everything
and all unknowingly, but with quivering sensibility. For he was not
merely an ignorant lad; he was also one of those who are set apart
throughout their lives to feel many things which they are never
permitted to comprehend.
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