- end_line
- 5609
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:56.336Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5535
- text
- "I will gladly fiddle you your fill," replied Hautboy to Standard.
"Come on."
In a few minutes we found ourselves in the fifth story of a sort of
storehouse, in a lateral street to Broadway. It was curiously furnished
with all sorts of odd furniture which seemed to have been obtained,
piece by piece, at auctions of old-fashioned household stuff. But all
was charmingly clean and cosy.
Pressed by Standard, Hautboy forthwith got out his dented old fiddle,
and sitting down on a tall rickety stool, played away right merrily
at Yankee Doodle and other off-handed, dashing, and disdainfully
care-free airs. But common as were the tunes, I was transfixed by
something miraculously superior in the style. Sitting there on the old
stool, his rusty hat sideways cocked on his head, one foot dangling
adrift, he plied the bow of an enchanter. All my moody discontent,
every vestige of peevishness fled. My whole splenetic soul capitulated
to the magical fiddle.
"Something of an Orpheus, ah?" said Standard, archly nudging me beneath
the left rib.
"And I, the charmed Bruin," murmured I.
The fiddle ceased. Once more, with redoubled curiosity, I gazed upon
the easy, indifferent Hautboy. But he entirely baffled inquisition.
When, leaving him, Standard and I were in the street once more, I
earnestly conjured him to tell me who, in sober truth, this marvelous
Hautboy was.
"Why, haven't you seen him? And didn't you yourself lay his whole
anatomy open on the marble slab at Taylor's? What more can you possibly
learn? Doubtless your own masterly insight has already put you in
possession of all."
"You mock me, Standard. There is some mystery here. Tell me, I entreat
you, who is Hautboy?"
"An extraordinary genius, Helmstone," said Standard, with sudden ardor,
"who in boyhood drained the whole flagon of glory; whose going from
city to city was a going from triumph to triumph. One who has been
an object of wonder to the wisest, been caressed by the loveliest,
received the open homage of thousands on thousands of the rabble. But
to-day he walks Broadway and no man knows him. With you and me, the
elbow of the hurrying clerk, and the pole of the remorseless omnibus,
shove him. He who has a hundred times been crowned with laurels, now
wears, as you see, a bunged beaver. Once fortune poured showers of gold
into his lap, as showers of laurel leaves upon his brow. To-day, from
house to house he hies, teaching fiddling for a living. Crammed once
with fame, he is now hilarious without it. _With_ genius and _without_
fame, he is happier than a king. More a prodigy now than ever."
"His true name?"
"Let me whisper it in your ear."
"What! Oh, Standard, myself, as a child, have shouted myself hoarse
applauding that very name in the theatre."
"I have heard your poem was not very handsomely received," said
Standard, now suddenly shifting the subject.
"Not a word of that, for heaven's sake!" cried I. "If Cicero, traveling
in the East, found sympathetic solace for his grief in beholding the
arid overthrow of a once gorgeous city, shall not my petty affair be as
nothing, when I behold in Hautboy the vine and the rose climbing the
shattered shafts of his tumbled temple of Fame?"
Next day I tore all my manuscripts, bought me a fiddle, and went to
take regular lessons of Hautboy.
- title
- Chunk 4