Books › The Story of the Violin, 1914 › scan 166
Scan 166
The Story of the Violin, 1914
9 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1(no line here) one of two readings
2Story of the Violin one of two readings
4permeated and regulated his whole life. Or perhaps, lest there should be all light and no shade in that life, let us say, by way of conjecture, that the good master was just a trifle too laborious, too exacting, too—whatever you wish to call it—and his wife and children, pupils, helpmates, and patrons had not always an easy time of it.
6I know a clever German violin-maker whom I have visited occasionally in his workshop, and found in blue working-blouse, bent over the skeleton of a future fiddle, and somehow always pictured within myself that noble scion of Cremona two centuries ago. This man's hands are strong and varnish-stained, almost too strong and muscular, it seems, to handle a thing so delicate as a violin, to trace the slender arabesque of the purfling and lay in the threads of black wood—but watch him. It is like a mother handling her little three-months'-old baby with a firm, but ah! so tender a hand. You feel that not a move is wrong; there is no hurry, no flurry; all is so sure, so steady, so delicate withal, and quick. So this man shapes violins and cures sick ones which are brought to him, while his wife—good, devoted, and clever little woman—and a pretty daughter look after the business and the customers. I wonder if Signora and Sigorina Stradivari did likewise? They say the master was always working; surely, some one had to see to other things for him.
8What noble, soul-satisfying work though, this shaping of violins must have been; more satisfying, I could fancy, than the kneading of the sculptor in his yielding, ignoble clay. It had all the healthy naturalness of the
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.