Noontide in the great city! The July sun blazes down upon the brick
sidewalks, heating them through and through, till they scorch the bare
toes of the little street children, who creep about, sheltering their
eyes with their hands, and keeping in the shade when it is possible. The apple-women crouch close to the wall, under their green umbrellas; the banana-sellers look yellow and wilted as their own wares. Men pass along, hurrying, because they are Americans, and business must go on whether it be hot or cold; but they move in a dogged jog-trot, expressive of weariness and disgust, and wipe their brows as they go, muttering anathemas under their breath on the whole summer season. Most of the men are in linen coats, some in no coats at all; all wear straw hats, and there is a great display of palm-leaf fans, waving in all degrees of energy. Here and there is seen an umbrella, but these are not frequent, for it seems to the American a strange and womanish thing to carry an umbrella except for rain; it also requires attention, and takes a man's mind off his business. Each man of all the hurrying thousands is shut up in himself, carrying his little world, which is all the world there is, about with him, seeing the other hurrying mites only "as trees walking," with no thought or note of them. Who cares about anybody else when it is so hot? Get through the day's work, and away to the wife and children in the cool by the sea-shore, or in the comfortable green suburb, where, if one must still be hot, one can at least suffer decently, and not "like a running river be,"--with apologies to the boy Chatterton.
Among all these hurrying motes in the broad, fierce stream of
sunshine, one figure moves slowly, without haste. Nobody looks at
anybody else, or this figure might attract some attention, even in the
streets of the great city. An old man, tall and slender, with snowy
hair falling in a single curl over his forehead; with brown eyes which
glance birdlike here and there, seeing everything, taking in every
face, every shadow of a vanishing form that hurries along and away
from him; with fiddle-bow in hand, and fiddle held close and tenderly
against his shoulder. De Arthenay, looking for his little girl!
Not content with scanning every face as it passes, he looks up at the
houses, searching with eager eye their blank, close-shuttered walls, as if in hope of seeing through the barriers of brick and stone, and surprising the secrets that may lurk within. Now and then a house seems to take his fancy, for he stops, and still looking up at the windows, plays a tune. It is generally the same tune,--a simple, homely old air, which the street-boys can readily take up and whistle, though they do not hear it in the music-halls or on the hand-organs. A languid crowd gathers round him when he pauses thus, for street-boys know a good fiddler when they hear him; and this is a good fiddler.
When a crowd has collected, the old man turns his attention from the
silent windows (they are generally silent; or if a face looks out, it
is not the beloved one which is in his mind night and day, day and
night) and scans the faces around him, with sad, eager eyes. Then, stopping short in his playing, he taps sharply on his fiddle, and asks in a clear voice if any one has seen or heard of a blind child, with beautiful brown hair, clear blue eyes, and the most wonderful voice in the world.