Books › The story of the violin, 1904 › scan 41
Scan 41
The story of the violin, 1904
12 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1CHAPTER II.
3TRADITION AND THE SCHOLAR (AN INTERLUDE).
5A certain scholar,1 when he had pleaded long enough with Dame Evidence to reveal to him the origin of bow instruments without being able to make her agreeable to his wishes, cast his eyes about for that other daughter of old King Time, that fairer one, with the eyes half sphinx's and half child's, and the voice like distant waters: Tradition.
7There are few countries in the world now where she may be found. Ages ago she left the once sacred valley of the Nile, from which the shades even of the gods, her former friends, had flown, and where only the pyramids rise into a blue and cloudless sky like death's eternal mation signs. She also left long, long ago the arid plains and hills which bury Babylon and Nippur, eveh and Ur; and China she avoids for reasons of her own. But there is one land where she abides yet; and there our scholar found her in her bower of roses and immortelles.
9India! Thousand-and-one-night-land of the world;
111 I believe F. J. Fétis was the first who drew attention to India as the probable cradle of bow instruments, although Sonnerat's Voyage aux Indes may have given him the initiative.
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