A Cathedral Singer
[Illustration]
A Cathedral Singer
BY JAMES LANE ALLEN
Author of "The Sword of Youth," "The Bride of the Mistletoe," "The Kentucky Cardinal," "The Choir Invisible," etc.
WITH FRONTISPIECE BY SIGISMOND DE IVANOWSKI
NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1916 Copyright, 1914, 1916, by THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, March, 1916_
TO PITY AND TO FAITH
A Cathedral Singer
I
Slowly on Morningside Heights rises the Cathedral of St. John the Divine: standing on a high rock under the Northern sky above the long wash of the untroubled sea, above the wash of the troubled waves of men.
It has fit neighbors. Across the street to the north looms the many-towered gray-walled Hospital of St. Luke--cathedral of our ruins, of our sufferings and our dust, near the cathedral of our souls.
Across the block to the south is situated a shed-like two-story building with dormer-windows and a crumpled three-sided roof, the studios of the National Academy of Design; and under that low brittle skylight youth toils over the shapes and colors of the visible vanishing paradise of the earth in the shadow of the cathedral which promises an unseen, an eternal one.
At the rear of the cathedral, across the roadway, stands a low stone wall. Just over the wall the earth sinks like a precipice to a green valley bottom far below. Out here is a rugged slope of rock and verdure and forest growth which brings into the city an ancient presence, nature--nature, the Elysian Fields of the art school, the potter's field of the hospital, the harvest field of the church.
This strip of nature fronts the dawn and is called Morningside Park. Past the foot of it a thoroughfare stretches northward and southward, level and wide and smooth. Over this thoroughfare the two opposite-moving streams of the city's traffic and travel rush headlong. Beyond the thoroughfare an embankment of houses shoves its mass before the eyes, and beyond the embankment the city spreads out over flats where human beings are as thick as river reeds.
Thus within small compass humanity is here: the cathedral, the hospital, the art school, and a strip of nature, and a broad highway along which, with their hearth-fires flickering fitfully under their tents of stone, are encamped life's restless, light-hearted, heavy-hearted Gipsies.
* * * * *
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: A Cathedral Singer by James Lane Allen
- 2: That person is the poorer in everything
- 3: Your model is the beauty of motherhood
- 4: Or waiting there merely as a model
- 5: She had posed herself by grace of bygone luxurious ways
- 6: Toe kicking heel and heel kicking toe
- 7: Falling on his ear was an unmistakable gift of song
- 8: It would be some Southerner who pushed him
- 9: One of the worst batteries was planted in our front porch
- 10: You see the statue of Washington and Lafayette
- 11: And you mustn't call an apostle Big Jim
- 12: I know a little about the cathedral
- 13: Over the rim of a common vase hung a few daffodils
- 14: Daily blotting them out one by one
- 15: With its lustrous bronzed hair
- 16: How fortunate at last to remember that she might pose
- 17: The janitor of the building handed in a card
- 18: The choir master looked across the small room at his pupil
- 19: The choir master persisted in asking
- 20: Teasing mood Suppose he doesn't like my voice
- 21: The choir master was impatient to have the lessons begin
- 22: She could not raise the sashes
- 23: Even before the accustomed hour the big barnlike room
- 24: He looked like a great Rembrandt
- 25: Having started out expressionless in nature
- 26: Looking again at their canvases
- 27: Across the road was the cathedral
- 28: Turning his head a little toward her under his bandaged eyes
- 29: You will have to bring new canvases
- 30: On the heights the cathedral rises slowly
- 31: Being pilgrim hearted but not pilgrim clad