Read "The Blind Musician" by Vladimir Korolenko online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Uncle Maxim simply tolerated all these musical experiments. Strange though it may seem, the inclinations which had so unmistakably manifested themselves in the boy excited mingled emotions in the breast of the old soldier. On the one hand, this intense passion for music indicated the boy's inherent musical talent, and foreshadowed a possible career; but in spite of this, a vague sense of disappointment filled Uncle Maxim's heart.
"It cannot be denied," thus ran Maxim's thoughts, "that music is a power by which a man may sway the hearts of the multitude. He, the blind man, will attract dandies and fashionable women by the hundreds, will play a valse or a nocturne," -- here Uncle Maxim's musical vocabulary came suddenly to an end -- "and they will wipe away their tears with their delicate handkerchiefs. Ah, the deuce take it! that is not what I could have wished for him. But what's to be done about it? The fellow is blind; he must do what he can with his life. But if it had only been singing! A song speaks not alone to the fastidious ear -- it excites fancies, arouses thoughts in the mind, and kindles courage in the heart."