The Choir Invisible

All that day John had to fight a battle for which he had never been trained;

moreover he had been compelled to divide his forces: there was the far-off

solemn battle going on in his private thoughts; and there was the usual

siege of duties in the school. For once he would gladly have shirked the

latter; but the single compensation he always tried to wrest from the

disagreeable things of life was to do them in such a way that they would

never fester in his conscience like thorns broken off in the flesh.

During the forenoon, therefore, by an effort which only those who have

experienced it can understand, he ordered off all communication with larger

troubles and confined himself in that stifling prison-house of the mind

where the perplexities and toils of childhood become enormous and everything

else in the world grows small. Up under the joists there was the terrible

struggle of a fly in a web, at first more and more violent, then ceasing in

a strain so fine that the ear could scarce take it; a bee came in one

window, went out another; a rat, sniffing greedily at its hole, crept toward

a crumb under a bench, ran back, crept nearer, seized it and was gone; a

toiling slate-pencil grated on its way as arduously as a wagon up a hill; he

had to teach a beginner its letters. These were the great happenings. At

noon the same child that had brought him a note on the day before came with

another: "Kitty is going to the ball with Horatio. I shall be alone. We can have our

talk uninterrupted. How unreasonable you are! Why don't you understand

things without wanting to have them explained? If you wish to go to the

ball, you can do this afterwards. Don't come till Kitty has gone."

Duties in the school till near sunset, then letters. O'Bannon had told him

that Mr. Bradford's post-rider would leave at four o'clock next morning; if

he had letters to send, they must be deposited in the box that night. Gray

had letters of the utmost importance to write--to his lawyer regarding the

late decision in his will case, and to the secretary of the Democratic Club

in Philadelphia touching the revival of activity in the clubs throughout the

country on account of the expected treaty with England.

After he had finished them, he strolled slowly about the dark town--past his

school-house, thinking that his teaching days would soon be over--past

Peter's blacksmith shop, thinking what a good fellow he always was--past Mr.

Bradford's editorial room, with a light under the door and the curtain drawn

across the window. Two or three times he lingered before show-windows of

merchandise. He had some taste in snuff-boxes, being the inheritor of

several from his Scotch and Irish ancestors, and there were a few in the new

silversmith's window which he found little to his liking. As he passed a

tavern, a group of Revolutionary officers, not yet gone to the ball, were

having a time of it over their pipes and memories; and he paused to hear one

finish a yarn of strong fibre about the battle of King's Mountain. Couples

went hurrying by him beautifully dressed. Once down a dark street he fancied

that he distinguished Amy's laughter ringing faintly out on the still air;

and once down another he clearly heard the long cry of a pet panther kept by

a young backwoods hunter.