Image 100 of Theo Brown Diaries, 1948

Brown, Theophilus

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Image 100 of Theo Brown Diaries, 1948

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"The response of his body aroused by music was quick and wonderful. It seems a hand-organ ""enough to change Main Street into another world""- a world where he would like to ""get settled."" since every chance to peep into is it very unsett- ling to things in this."" More than once, after hearing a tune, he had ""looked about to see if the prople int he street were going to keep on and do their errands and return to their stores and homes again."" His daughters piano-playing so ""sets him up"" that he walks down the street to the high measure of the music; and he says, ""The faces in the street looked to me as though the music and beauty had reached them too, and my 'how fare ye?' as I passed them, had a little more depth than I had been wont to put into it."" Beethoven's ""Adelaide"" he thinks must be a joy forever, ""if ears continue to be constructed like ours. Passages from some great compositions seldon fail to lift him from a low mood; and often they instantly change what was a moment before an opaque muddy tumble-bug's ball, on which we were crawling, into a shining sphere, bathed in a light, cushioned in air, and wheellng off with us amid the stars."" After being ""crazed"" withWagner's music as rendered by Thomas's orchestra he finds it Cheopened bt a return to a sonata of Beethoven. He early begins to feed on memories, and, like Robert Collyer, is always interested in the boy he was and the people he has lived among. There are no finer touches than these few pictures of his early days in ""the sleepu old neighborhood of Seekonk, wher ther may have been a little ripple of excitement one morning in 1811 when it was announced that Mrs.Samuel Brown had another son."" How gladly would he go back to mend the one little act of disobedience! What times he hadas a farm boy at old Asa Allen's, whose 'strong halt"" was hard work, and whose wife-good old soul!- was about as thin in her conversation asin the diet she served up! Her cookery was ""inexpressive""; yet youc oould tell the coffee and the tea apart by considering thta one always came at morning and the other at night. But he would ""go to a great way to look into her serene face again and plant a hearty kiss among the soft old wrinkles, and tell her how much he mow appreciated the unclouded sunshine that shone from her face through those four years of his youth/"(over)

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