The sweet one-year-old baby of our kin puts its hands upon our knees and
looks up into our eyes with eyes full of unutterable meaning. It has so
much to say! It can only say "ga-ga" and "ba-ba"; but with oh! how
searching a voice, how touching a look--that is, if one is fond of
babies! We are moved to the very core; we want to understand, for it
concerns us all; we were once like that ourselves--the individual and
the race--but for the life of us we cannot _remember_.
And what canst _thou_ say to us yet, Euterpe, but thy "ga-ga" and thy
"ba-ba," the inarticulate sweetness whereof we feel and cannot
comprehend? But how beautiful it is--and what a look thou hast, and
what a voice--that is, if one is fond of music!
"Je suis las des mois--je suis d'entendre
Ce qui peut mentir;
J'aime mieux les sons, qu'au lieu de comprendre
je n'ai qu'a sentir."
Next day I would buy or beg or borrow the music that had filled me with
such emotion and delight, and take it home to my little square piano,
and try to finger it all out for myself. But I had begun too late
in life.
To sit, longing and helpless, before an instrument one cannot play, with
a lovely score one cannot read! Even Tantalus was spared such an
ordeal as that.
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