THE WOOD-CARVER OF 'LYMPUS
M. E. Waller
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, May 10, 2012)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 Excerpt: ...or the ineffable but faded glories of Veronese in dark San Sebastiano, satisfying my craving for the real with the ancient carvings of Bernward's Hildesheim, or letting my soul bask in the sunlight of the divine serenity of the Madonna faces of Holbein and Raphael, I was aware of Aunt Lize at work with the old handloom in the garret overhead. I heard, as an accompaniment to my thoughts, the rick-rack of the swift shuttles, and the jar and rattling crash of the frames every time Aunt Lize shifted them. It has given me food for thought. How incessantly the shuttles have been flying these last years, interweaving our life-threads--Madeline Cope's, Waldort's, Philip's, and mine! Nor yet may I trace the pattern.--Strange! This afternoon I am alone, and have been re-reading a dozen of the letters that are entirely personal; transcribing them also, as well as a few extracts from the many descriptive ones. In them I have found the loose ends of several strands; the strands themselves, which I mistook at first for single threads, I find to be duplex, triplicate, yea, multiplex. While busy transcribing these letters I have felt as if I were working at the Loom of Life, watching the plying shuttles, taking a hand now and then in shifting the frames. Once or twice I have caught at an end--a mere "thrum "--and tried to unravel a little way to find its connection with the pattern of sixties. He has made and lost a half-dozen fortunes--but is solid now. I met him in Europe, and he has never failed me; but he does n't " open up well," as we say of a vein, when it comes to the eternal things of a man's life. We get on well enough with the transient--quotations on stocks and bonds, land prospectus, mining, etc. So I turn to you there on your New England m...