You have made your little music for us to-day, but
when you have grown tall and strong, One Who is greater than I shall
play upon you with the breath of His mighty winds; and when this
little boy is older than I am now,"--and here he put his hand on my
grandfather's head,--"his children's children shall hear your music
and be glad."
In a little while after that, the old man put on his pack and went
away; but my grandfather could not forget him, and almost every day he
looked at the stick by the brook. The whistle at the top began to
wither and dry up, and the loose bark cracked open and fell away,
until it seemed as if the whole stick must be dead; but one day my
grandfather saw that a tiny bud had appeared below where the whistle
had been; and the bud became a little sprout, and the sprout a shoot,
and other shoots followed, until the stick was indeed a little tree.
Through all the years that came after, it grew taller and stronger,
until "The Tinker's Willow" was known as the greatest tree in all the
countryside, and the birds did, indeed, build their nests among its
branches, and the cattle lay in its shade in the hot noontide.
Even when my grandfather was an old, old man, and had grown-up sons
and daughters, and many grandchildren, he loved to sit on the bench by
the shop and listen to the voice of the wind among the leaves of the
great tree; and then, if we asked him, he would tell us again of the
tinker who planted it, and of the music that came from the stick out
of which it grew.
Pages:
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303