Thus all beauty that appears
Has birth as sound to finer sense
And lighter-clad intelligence."
As the universe is all mechanism to one man, all form and colour to
another, so to Anthony Croft the world was all melody.
Notwithstanding these many gifts and possibilities, the doctor's wife
advised the Widow Croft to make a plumber of him, intimating
delicately that these freaks of nature, while playing no apparent
part in the divine economy, could sometimes be made self-supporting.
The seventeenth year of his life marked a definite epoch in his
development. He studied Jacob Friedheim's treatise until he knew the
characteristics of all the great violin models, from the Amatis,
Hieronymus, Antonius, and Nicolas, to those of Stradivarius,
Guarnerius, and Steiner.
It was in this year, also, that he made a very precious discovery.
While browsing in the rubbish in Squire Bean's garret to see if he
could find the missing sound-post of the old violin, he came upon a
billet of wood wrapped in cloth and paper. When unwrapped, it was
plainly labelled "Wood from the Bean Maple at Pleasant Point; the
biggest maple in York County, and believed to be one of the biggest
in the State of Maine." Anthony found that the oldest inhabitant of
Pleasant River remembered the stump of the tree, and that the boys
used to jump over it and admire its proportions whenever they went
fishing at the Point. The wood, therefore, was perhaps eighty or
ninety years old.
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