"'My soul hears their glad step coming,' he said; 'and they shall mount!
they shall mount!' He raised his shrivelled hand to his eyes.
"Then slowly from the white sky above, through the still air, came
something falling, falling, falling. Softly it fluttered down, and dropped
on to the breast of the dying man. He felt it with his hands. It was a
feather. He died holding it."
The boy had shaded his eyes with his hand. On the wood of the carving
great drops fell. The stranger must have laughed at him, or remained
silent. He did so.
"How did you know it?" the boy whispered at last. "It is not written
there--not on that wood. How did you know it?"
"Certainly," said the stranger, "the whole of the story is not written
here, but it is suggested. And the attribute of all true art, the highest
and the lowest, is this--that it rays more than it says, and takes you away
from itself. It is a little door that opens into an infinite hall where
you may find what you please. Men, thinking to detract, say: 'People read
more in this or that work of genius than was ever written in it,' not
perceiving that they pay the highest compliment. If we pick up the finger
and nail of a real man, we can decipher a whole story--could almost
reconstruct the creature again, from head to foot. But half the body of a
Mumboo-jumbow idol leaves us utterly in the dark as to what the rest was
like.
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