The Argosy — page 322: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

301 MARGARET’S FRENZY. Iv was an unlucky day for me—though I was not born till ten years afterwards—when that big cellar door slammed to, and nipped off the end of Margaret’s little finger at the early age of seven. Margaret was passionately fond of music, but she could not sing, and her encounter with the door prevented her from being a first- rate performer on the piano. She would not content herself with anything short of perfection; and so for years long and many the music within her found no utterance. At last, after a few grey hairs began to show themselves among her thick brown braids, Professor Mohr advised her to learn the violin. We were spending some happy years together in Germany, Margaret playing the role of guardian grimalkin to my kittenish innocence. We were not related, but as inseparable as the celebrated Ladies of Llangollen. I took drawing lessons, and we were both deep in languages. In our free hours we were careless and happy as lambs in clover, until Professor Mohr’s unlucky suggestion started us on the high road to despair. We were staying in Munich when this misfortune overtook us. Margaret was fired with enthusiasm at the thought of possibly being a good musician at last. She was past thirty, and for a while tortured herself with fears that this was too old to begin to learn anything so difficult as the violin. But they raked up for her benefit many instances of musical prodigies turned out late in life, to the astonish- ment of the world and themselves. Perseverance, aptitude, and health would do wonders. Convinced at last of the wisdom of her undertaking, and radiant with hope, Margaret engaged a master at more marks an hour than would have paid for half a week of operas inthe Gallerie Noble. She next commissioned some old virtuosi and dealers in musical instru- ments to ferret out for her a good violin from beneath the dust and rubbish of ages. No easy matter this: for Margaret had read deeply on the subject, and would be content with nothing of a later date than the 17th century ; and the graining of the cunningly mosaiced sycamore must undulate under its golden varnish ‘like the setting summer sun on cloud and wave.” At the expiration of a week, Herr Bratwurst wrote from the Tyrol, describing with flowery extravagance the jewel of an instru- ment he had unearthed at Brixen, among the goods and chattels of an Israelitish gentleman in the old clothes business. When found, this prize was a wreck, gone to pieces under billows of flimsy satin gowns, and theatrical coats of cotton velvet ; but carefully set together again by the magic hand of a Bratwurst, it was worthy of Tarisio conniclbooolks (CO