The Choir Invisible

In the open square on Cheapside in Lexington there is now a bronze statue of

John Breckinridge. Not far from where it stands the pioneers a hundred years

ago had built the first log school-house of the town.

Poor old school-house, long since become scattered ashes! Poor little

backwoods academicians, driven in about sunrise, driven out toward dusk!

Poor little tired backs with nothing to lean against! Poor little bare feet

that could never reach the floor! Poor little droop-headed figures, so

sleepy in the long summer days, so afraid to fall asleep! Long, long since,

little children of the past, your backs have become straight enough,

measured on the same cool bed; sooner or later your feet, wherever

wandering, have found their resting-places in the soft earth; and all your

drooping heads have gone to sleep on the same dreamless pillow and there are

sleeping.

And the young schoolmaster, who seemed exempt from frailty while

he guarded like a sentinel that lone outpost of the alphabet--he too has

long since joined the choir invisible of the immortal dead. But there is

something left of him though more than a century has passed away: something

that has wandered far down the course of time to us like the faint summer

fragrance of a young tree long since fallen dead in its wintered

forest--like a dim radiance yet travelling onward into space from an orb

turned black and cold--like an old melody, surviving on and on in the air

without any instrument, without any strings.

John Gray, the school-master. At four o'clock that afternoon and therefore

earlier than usual, he was standing on the hickory block which formed the

doorstep of the school-house, having just closed the door behind him for the

day. Down at his side, between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, hung

his big black hat, which was decorated with a tricoloured cockade, to show

that he was a member of the Democratic Society of Lexington, modelled after

the Democratic Society of Philadelphia and the Jacobin clubs of France. In

the open palm of the other lay his big silver English lever watch with a

glass case and broad black silk fob.

A young fellow of powerful build, lean, muscular; wearing simply but with

gentlemanly care a suit of black, which was relieved around his wrists and

neck by linen, snow-white and of the finest quality. In contrast with his

dress, a complexion fresh, pure, brilliant--the complexion of health and

innocence; in contrast with this complexion from above a mass of coarse

dark-red hair, cut short and loosely curling. Much physical beauty in the

head, the shape being noble, the pose full of dignity and of strength;

almost no beauty in the face itself except in the gray eyes which were

sincere, modest, grave. Yet a face not without moral loftiness and

intellectual power; rugged as a rock, but as a rock is made less rugged by a

little vine creeping over it, so his was softened by a fine network of

nerves that wrought out upon it a look of kindness; betraying the first

nature of passion, but disciplined to the higher nature of control;

youthful, but wearing those unmistakable marks of maturity which mean a

fierce early struggle against the rougher forces of the world. On the whole,

with the calm, self respecting air of one who, having thus far won in the

battle of life, has a fiercer longing for larger conflict, and whose entire

character rests on the noiseless conviction that he is a man and a

gentleman.