246

OF A FAMILY OF MUSICANS
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The Organist of the Fisrt Con-
gregational Church and His Antecedends.
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V. T. Taber and His Accomplishments---The
Purtan Boy Learning the Organ in
the Desrted Church.
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The wonderfulthing about music--heavenly maid
is that she grows young when ever she is wooed.
Ordinary women lose a few. wrinkles out of theirfaces,
Image walk with lighter step, too, when they are loved, but at
most they can only enjoy life for a part of a century,
whereas music keeps dancing on down through the
ages, always growing father to look upon, whether she
wears purple robes and swings her tibrel of triunph by
the Red Sea or mincia the white woes of Elsa of Brabnt
upon the modern stage.
The lovers of music are differnt from the lovers of other women, because they are born with this love implanted in their souls, and no longer do they hear the far off callings of the voice of her they are desined to live for than they cry, without so much looking on her face; " Here, by God's rood, is the one maid for me."
These lovers come from every country on earth, and it is said that some as true crouch over the fire under the pale ice landing sky, as those who lift impassioned eyes and voices under the broding stars of Italy.
One finds thess lovers right at one's own door, looking very much like other pepole, to be sure, but wearing on their hearts an amulet against old age and carking care.
Not so very many years ago there was born in Sherborn, Mass., one of these fortunate persons. Almost every one in Omaha knows him--W. T. Tober, organist of the First Congersgtional church.
There were certain localities in the old Purtain and Pilgirm distrcits where to be born a musican was a distict misforunte.
The frightful chill of a dogmatic and auto-cratic faith blew on all the flowers of beauty and bilghed them. Wordly happiness was a crime, and music, being one of those things which conferred happinss was regrded as obvious and dangerous. But in this desert of [dr?] there were a few little onses where the esthics grew and were cherished for a hunderd years past. There was one in Maine; there was one in New York city ; and there was one i Masschusats.
Sherborn lies within a distict which has given to America some of her best musical festivals and her finest musicains. So no one complained when Mr. Taber, then a shy and lank lad, hurried two miles after school to the old Pilgrim church, and climbed into the dusky organ loft to play in solitude on the great organ. The occupation was at once an indugence and a study. Each day the secret of some new harmony was learned ; the function if an other pedal, or the purpose of a stop, Great musical facts that have to be taught to many come there in the silence. Into the knowledge of the boy-- a very shy boy, who did not like to talk, and who was even anxlous that no one should know how well he was beginnig to play. He shark from voicing his enthusim ; he was afraid that someone would discover in him an emotion. And he did not like it when anyone stole into chilly church to find out what made the organ swell so one a week day.
Practing of a laborious sort was not a
necessity with this boy. He read must with as much ease and more interst than he did letters. When he opened a music book it to go through it from cover to cover, with avidity, as one reads a novel. And no one fond any fault, or told him he was a fool or a coxcomb, as often the habit in America when a boy is detched with musical talent concealed abou his person.