Part 33

... Thou dim and lofty heaven of the North,--grey sky of Odin,--bitter thy winds and spectral all thy colors!--they that dwell beneath thee know not the glory of Eternal Summer's green,--the azure splendor of southern day!--but thine are the lightnings of Thought illuminating for human eyes the interspaces between sun and sun. Thine the generations of might,--the strivers, the battlers,--the men who make Nature tame!--thine the domain of inspiration and achievement,--the larger heroisms, the vaster labors that endure, the higher knowledge, and all the witchcrafts of science!...

But in each one of us there lives a mysterious Something which is Self, yet also infinitely more than Self,--incomprehensibly multiple,--the complex total of sensations, impulses, timidities belonging to the unknown past. And the lips of the little stranger from the tropics have become all white, because that Something within her,--ghostly bequest from generations who loved the light and rest and wondrous color of a more radiant world,--now shrinks all back about her girl's heart with fear of this pale grim North.... And lo!--opening mile-wide in dream-grey majesty before us,--reaching away, through measureless mazes of masting, into remotenesses all vapor-veiled,--the mighty perspective of New York harbor!...

Thou knowest it not, this gloom about us, little maiden;--'tis only a magical dusk we are entering,--only that mystic dimness in which miracles must be wrought!... See the marvellous shapes uprising,--the immensities, the astonishments! And other greater wonders thou wilt behold in a little while, when we shall have become lost to each other forever in the surging of the City's million-hearted life!... 'Tis all shadow here, thou sayest?--Ay, 'tis twilight, verily, by contrast with that glory out of which thou camest, Lys--twilight only,--but the Twilight of the Gods!... _Adié, chè!--Bon-Dié ké bént ou!_...

APPENDIX

SOME CREOLE MELODIES

More than a hundred years ago Thibault de Chanvallon expressed his astonishment at the charm and wonderful sense of musical rhythm characterizing the slave-songs and slave-dances of Martinique. The rhythmical sense of the negroes especially impressed him. "I have seen," he writes, "seven or eight hundred negroes accompanying a wedding-party to the sound of song. They would all leap up in the air and come down together;--the movement was so exact and general that the noise of their fall made but a single sound."

An almost similar phenomenon may be witnessed any Carnival season in St. Pierre,--while the Devil makes his nightly round, followed by many hundred boys clapping hands and leaping in chorus. It may also be observed in the popular malicious custom of the pillard, or, in creole, _piyà._ Some person whom it is deemed justifiable and safe to annoy, may suddenly find himself followed in the street by a singing chorus of several hundred, all clapping hands and dancing or running in perfect time, so that all the bare feet strike the ground together. Or the _pillard-chorus_ may even take up its position before the residence of the party disliked, and then proceed with its performance. An example of such a _pillard_ is given further on, in the song entitled _Loéma tombé._ The improvisation by a single voice begins the pillard,--which in English might be rendered as follows:--

(_Single voice_) You little children there!--you who were by the river-side! Tell me truly this:--Did you see Loéma fall? Tell me truly this-- (_Chorus, opening_) Did you see Loéma fall? (_Single voice_) Tell me truly this-- (_Chorus_) Did you see Loéma fall? (_Single voice, more rapidly_) Tell me truly this-- (_Chorus, more quickly_) Loéma fall! (_Single voice_) Tell me truly this-- (_Chorus_) Loéma fall! (_Single voice_) Tell me truly this-- (_Chorus, always more quickly, and more loudly, all the hands clapping together like a fire of musketry_) Loéma fall! etc.

The same rhythmic element characterizes many of the games and round dances of Martinique children;--but, as a rule, I think it is perceptible that the sense of time is less developed in the colored children than in the black.

The other melodies which are given as specimens of Martinique music show less of the African element,--the nearest approach to it being in _Tant sirop_; but all are probably creations of the mixed race. _Marie-Clémence_ is a Carnival satire composed not more than four years ago. _To-to-to_ is very old--dates back, perhaps, to the time of the _belles-affranchies._ It is seldom sung now except by survivors of the old régime: the sincerity and tenderness of the emotion that inspired it--the old sweetness of heart and simplicity of thought,--are passing forever away.

To my friend, Henry Edward Krehbiel, the musical lecturer and critic,--at once historian and folklorist in the study of race-music,--and to Mr. Frank van der Stucken, the New York musical composer, I owe the preparation of these four melodies for voice and piano-forte. The arrangements of _To-to-to_ and _Loéma tombé_ are Mr. Van der Stucken's.

"TO-TO-TO"

(_Creole werds_)

MARIE-CLÉMENCE

(_Creole words_)

TANT SIROP EST DOUX

(_Negro-French_)

LOÉMA TOMBÉ

(_Creole words_)