upon him.

On these occasions he would set off without a knapsack; I noticed this
once when I happened to be roaming in the fields two or three miles [A
Norwegian mile is about seven English miles.] from a town, where I had
gone on a visit. When he came home again, he would be in capital
spirits, but before setting out he was always so silent and melancholy
that I had to sustain nearly the whole burden of the conversation. He
used to have periods of low spirits.

One indication of these moods was his manner in playing on the violin I
had now found with broken strings, at the back of his bookshelf. As it
lay there, it recalled the incidents of twenty years ago.

This violin he once held in high esteem; it had the place of honour on
his wall, with the bow beside it. It had been left him by a friend, an
old clerk, [Norw. "klokker," almost answering to the Scotch precentor,
but a klokker, in addition to leading the singing in church, has to read
the opening prayer and to assist the priest in putting on his
vestments.] at his home up in the north, who had taught him to play,
and had evidently been one of those musical geniuses who are never fully
appreciated in this world.

David loved to give play to his fancy, not only upon this violin--he had
a good ear, and had learnt not a little--but also about it: where it
really came from, and how old it might be? He would exceedingly have
liked an indistinct mark inside to mean that it was "possibly a
Cremona"; it was one of his weak points, and this room for conjecture
was evidently, in his eyes, one of the excellences of the violin.