THE GILDED ROLL.

Nosing around in an old box—­packed away, and lost to memory for years—­an hour ago I found a musty package of gilt paper, or rather, a roll it was, with the green-tarnished gold of the old sheet for the outer wrapper.  I picked it up mechanically to toss it into some obscure corner, when, carelessly lifting it by one end, a child’s tin whistle dropped therefrom and fell tinkling on the attic floor.  It lies before me on my writing table now—­and so, too, does the roll entire, though now a roll no longer,—­for my eager fingers have unrolled the gilded covering, and all its precious contents are spread out beneath my hungry eyes.

Here is a scroll of ink-written music.  I don’t read music, but I know the dash and swing of the pen that rained it on the page.  Here is a letter, with the self-same impulse and abandon in every syllable; and its melody—­however sweet the other—­is far more sweet to me.  And here are other letters like it—­three—­five—­and seven, at least.  Bob wrote them from the front, and Billy kept them for me when I went to join him.  Dear boy!  Dear boy!

Here are some cards of bristol-board.  Ah! when Bob came to these there were no blotches then.  What faces—­what expressions!  The droll, ridiculous, good-for-nothing genius, with his “sad mouth,” as he called it, “upside down,” laughing always—­at everything, at big rallies, and mass-meetings and conventions, county fairs, and floral halls, booths, watermelon-wagons, dancing-tents, the swing, Daguerrean-car, the “lung-barometer,” and the air-gun man.  Oh! what a gifted, good-for-nothing boy Bob was in those old days!  And here ’s a picture of a girlish face—­a very faded photograph—­even fresh from “the gallery,” five and twenty years ago it was a faded thing.  But the living face—­how bright and clear that was!—­for “Doc,” Bob’s awful name for her, was a pretty girl, and brilliant, clever, lovable every way.  No wonder Bob fancied her!  And you could see some hint of her jaunty loveliness in every fairy face he drew, and you could find her happy ways and dainty tastes unconsciously assumed in all he did—­the books he read—­the poems he admired, and those he wrote; and, ringing clear and pure and jubilant, the vibrant beauty of her voice could clearly be defined and traced through all his music.  Now, there’s the happy pair of them—­Bob and Doc.  Make of them just whatever your good fancy may dictate, but keep in mind the stern, relentless ways of destiny.

You are not at the beginning of a novel, only at the threshold of one of a hundred experiences that lie buried in the past, and this particular one most happily resurrected by these odds and ends found in the gilded roll.

You see, dating away back, the contents of this package, mainly, were hastily gathered together after a week’s visit out at the old Mills farm; the gilt paper, and the whistle, and the pictures, they were Billy’s; the music pages, Bob’s, or Doc’s; the letters and some other manuscripts were mine.