The Eternal Masculine by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

As when a child shakes a kaleidoscope the bits of colored glass shift from one distinct pattern into another, so when I think of the events which came of Zoëtique Vézina's gift of whistling, the little story falls into two or three sharply defined pictures, so different from each other, so linked, so filled with life, that, simple as it is, the tale appears to me dramatic enough to tell exactly as it happened.

It is a far cry from the moonlit stillness of an August night on a Canadian lake-a dark amphitheatre of hills guarding the sky-line, a road of light across the water, canoes floating black on silver-from that to the crowded glare of a New York theatre. Yet the span of life reaches easily across such distances, and the stage-settings of the play I am to tell were such. It was the last night of a fortnight's visit to the Morgans' camp, and they, as well as I, were going back to civilization next day. There was a ceremony to be celebrated which had become a custom of last nights, they explained to me-the guides gave a concert. It was always clear and always moonlight on a last night in camp-by law, young Bob Morgan gave me to understand. In any case, it was invariable, and here was this cloudless, bright evening to back up his assertion. There were two methods of giving the concert: either the _messieurs_, which included Mrs. Morgan, stayed in camp and the men paddled about at a picturesque distance, and serenaded them from boats; or else the messieurs went out in the canoes and the guides "howled from the underbrush," as Bob put it. To-night, the air was so warm and the wet moonlight lay in such thick splashes over the water that no one wanted to stay on land. It gave a man a greedy feeling that he must get "_au large_" and loot jewelry and broken gold out of the night. So the canvas canoes slid from the quay with musical wooden and liquid noises, and off we drifted, two and two, into the perspective of a dream.