He had suffered from the modern malady of unlimited appreciativeness as much as any living man of his own age.

Dozens of his fellows in years and experience, who had never thought specially of the matter, but had blunderingly applied themselves to whatever form of art confronted them at the moment of their making a move, were by this time acquiring renown as new lights; while he was still unknown.

He wished that some accident could have hemmed in his eyes between inexorable blinkers, and sped him on in a channel ever so worn.
Thus balanced between believing and not believing in his own future, he was recalled to the scene without by hearing the notes of a familiar hymn, rising in subdued harmonies from a valley below.

He listened more heedfully.

It was his old friend the 'New Sabbath,' which he had never once heard since the lisping days of childhood, and whose existence, much as it had then been to him, he had till this moment quite forgotten.