noon
To console himself , the boy traded for a music-box , which he set going with a long brass lever . Its various tunes were picked in holes on circular steel sheets , which were fed into the box and set whirling with the lever . At night when Larmy was n't enjoying what David called a spook-fest , the boy would sit in the office by the hour and listen to his music-box . He must have played `` Love 's Golden Dream Is Past '' a hundred lonesome times that winter -LRB- it had been their favourite waltz -- his and the girl 's -- at the Imperial Club -RRB- , and it was a safe guess that if the boys in the office , as they passed the box at noon , would give the lever a yank , from the abdomen of the contrivance the waltz song would begin deep and low to rumble and swell out with all the simulation of sorrow that a mechanical soul may express . As the winter deepened , Larmy and the reporter and the `` father '' had more and more converse . The `` father '' explained a theory of immortality which did not interest the reporter , but which Larmy heard eagerly . It said that science would resolve matter into mere forms of motion , which are expressions of divine will , and that the only place where this divine will exists in its pure state , eluding the so-called material state , is in the human soul .