{"id":"01KG6YH3QH81TJ5N8B72S2QC6T","cid":"bafkreiht6qejgjqk34svu4bhezwvcio6ax3cahmjr543all3dw2lzgs57i","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5603,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 12","source_file":"01KG6YDD8GKW0DRD5H2MY1NRZ7","start_line":5519,"text":"\"I don't say I scorn him; you are unjust. I simply declare that he is\r\nno pattern for me.\"\r\n\r\nA sudden noise at my side attracted my ear. Turning, I saw Hautboy\r\nagain, who very blithely reseated himself on the chair he had left.\r\n\r\n\"I was behind time with my engagement,\" said Hautboy, \"so thought I\r\nwould run back and rejoin you. But come, you have sat long enough here.\r\nLet us go to my rooms. It is only five minutes' walk.\"\r\n\r\n\"If you will promise to fiddle for us, we will,\" said Standard.\r\n\r\nFiddle! thought I--he's a jigembob _fiddler_ then? No wonder genius\r\ndeclines to measure its pace to a fiddler's bow. My spleen was very\r\nstrong on me now.\r\n\r\n\"I will gladly fiddle you your fill,\" replied Hautboy to Standard.\r\n\"Come on.\"\r\n\r\nIn a few minutes we found ourselves in the fifth story of a sort of\r\nstorehouse, in a lateral street to Broadway. It was curiously furnished\r\nwith all sorts of odd furniture which seemed to have been obtained,\r\npiece by piece, at auctions of old-fashioned household stuff. But all\r\nwas charmingly clean and cosy.\r\n\r\nPressed by Standard, Hautboy forthwith got out his dented old fiddle,\r\nand sitting down on a tall rickety stool, played away right merrily\r\nat Yankee Doodle and other off-handed, dashing, and disdainfully\r\ncare-free airs. But common as were the tunes, I was transfixed by\r\nsomething miraculously superior in the style. Sitting there on the old\r\nstool, his rusty hat sideways cocked on his head, one foot dangling\r\nadrift, he plied the bow of an enchanter. All my moody discontent,\r\nevery vestige of peevishness fled. My whole splenetic soul capitulated\r\nto the magical fiddle.\r\n\r\n\"Something of an Orpheus, ah?\" said Standard, archly nudging me beneath\r\nthe left rib.\r\n\r\n\"And I, the charmed Bruin,\" murmured I.\r\n\r\nThe fiddle ceased. Once more, with redoubled curiosity, I gazed upon\r\nthe easy, indifferent Hautboy. But he entirely baffled inquisition.\r\n\r\nWhen, leaving him, Standard and I were in the street once more, I\r\nearnestly conjured him to tell me who, in sober truth, this marvelous\r\nHautboy was.\r\n\r\n\"Why, haven't you seen him? And didn't you yourself lay his whole\r\nanatomy open on the marble slab at Taylor's? What more can you possibly\r\nlearn? Doubtless your own masterly insight has already put you in\r\npossession of all.\"\r\n\r\n\"You mock me, Standard. There is some mystery here. Tell me, I entreat\r\nyou, who is Hautboy?\"\r\n\r\n\"An extraordinary genius, Helmstone,\" said Standard, with sudden ardor,\r\n\"who in boyhood drained the whole flagon of glory; whose going from\r\ncity to city was a going from triumph to triumph. One who has been\r\nan object of wonder to the wisest, been caressed by the loveliest,\r\nreceived the open homage of thousands on thousands of the rabble. But\r\nto-day he walks Broadway and no man knows him. With you and me, the\r\nelbow of the hurrying clerk, and the pole of the remorseless omnibus,\r\nshove him. He who has a hundred times been crowned with laurels, now\r\nwears, as you see, a bunged beaver. Once fortune poured showers of gold\r\ninto his lap, as showers of laurel leaves upon his brow. To-day, from\r\nhouse to house he hies, teaching fiddling for a living. Crammed once\r\nwith fame, he is now hilarious without it. _With_ genius and _without_\r\nfame, he is happier than a king. More a prodigy now than ever.\"\r\n\r\n\"His true name?\"\r\n\r\n\"Let me whisper it in your ear.\"\r\n\r\n\"What! Oh, Standard, myself, as a child, have shouted myself hoarse\r\napplauding that very name in the theatre.\"\r\n\r\n\"I have heard your poem was not very handsomely received,\" said\r\nStandard, now suddenly shifting the subject.\r\n\r\n\"Not a word of that, for heaven's sake!\" cried I. \"If Cicero, traveling\r\nin the East, found sympathetic solace for his grief in beholding the\r\narid overthrow of a once gorgeous city, shall not my petty affair be as\r\nnothing, when I behold in Hautboy the vine and the rose climbing the\r\nshattered shafts of his tumbled temple of Fame?\"\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 12"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6YGBGKG15EQNWSZXFWPM05","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6YDD8GKW0DRD5H2MY1NRZ7","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG6YCG626JN4FCG8QK17CQCF","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6YH3QEGPFVKZ5PKCS6T6KH","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6YH3QH7WBHG2KYWDNKJAF5","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:50.705Z","ts":"2026-01-30T07:57:55.833Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}