York, generously offering me a place in his
counting-house. The case resolved itself into
this : If I went to college, I should have to
THE STORY OF A BAD BOY 271
devote several years to my studies, and at the
end of the collegiate course would have no
settled profession. If I accepted my uncle s
offer, which could not stand waiting, I should
at once be in a comparatively independent
position. It was hard to give up the long-
cherished dream of being a Harvard boy ; but
I gave it up.
The decision once made, it was Uncle Snow s
wish that I should enter his counting-house
immediately. The cause of my good uncle s
haste was this : he was afraid that I would
turn out to be a poet before he could make a
merchant of me.
His fears were based upon the fact that I
had published in the Rivermouth Barnacle
some verses addressed in a familiar manner
To the Moon. Now, the idea of a boy, with
his living to get, placing himself in communi
cation with the Moon, struck the mercantile
mind as monstrous. It was not only a bad
investment, it was lunacy.
We adopted Uncle Snow s views so far as
to accede to his proposition forthwith. My
mother, I neglected to say, was also to reside
in New York
I shall not draw a picture of Pepper Whit-
comb s disgust when the news was imparted
to him, nor attempt to paint Sailor Ben s dis-
272 THE STORY OF A BAD BOY
tress at the prospect of losing his little mess
mate.
In the excitement of preparing for the jour
ney I did not feel any very deep regret myself.
But when the moment came for leaving, and I
saw my small trunk lashed up behind the car
riage, then the pleasantness of the old life and
a vague dread of the new came over me, and a
mist filled my eyes, shutting out the group of
schoolfellows, including all the members of the
Centipede Club, who had come down to the
house to see me off.
As the carriage swept round the corner, I
leaned out of the window to take a last look at
Sailor Ben s cottage, and there was the Admi
ral s flag flying at half-mast.
So I left Rivermouth, little dreaming that I
was not to see the old place again for many
and many a year.
CHAPTER XXII
EXEUNT OMNES
WITH the close of my schooldays at River-
mouth this modest chronicle ends.
The new life upon which I entered, the new
friends and foes I encountered on the road,
and what I did and what I did not, are matters
that do not come within the scope of these
pages. But before I write Finis to the record
as it stands, before I leave it feeling as if I
were once more going away from my boyhood
I have a word or two to say concerning a
few of the personages who have figured in the
story, if you will allow me to call Gypsy a
personage.
I am sure that the reader who has followed
me thus far will be willing to hear what became
of her, and Sailor Ben and Miss Abigail and
the Captain.
First about Gypsy. A month after my de
parture from Rivermouth the Captain informed
me by letter that he had parted with the little
mare, according to agreement. She had been
274 THE STORY OF A BAD BOY
sold to the ring-master of a travelling circus (I
had stipulated on this disposal of her), and was
about to set out on her travels. She did not
disappoint my glowing anticipations, but be
came quite a celebrity in her way, by dancing
the polka to slow music on a pine-board ball
room constructed for the purpose.
I chanced once, a long while afterwards, to
be in a country town where her troupe was
giving exhibitions ; I even read the gaudily
illumined show-bill, setting forth the accom
plishments of the far-famed Arabian trick pony
Zuleika, formerly owned by the Prince Shaz-
Zaman of Damascus but failed to recognize
my dear little mustang girl behind those high-
sounding titles, and so, alas ! did not attend
the performance. I hope all the praises she
received and all the spangled trappings she
wore did not spoil her ; but I am afraid they
did, for she was always overmuch given to the
vanities of this world.
Miss Abigail regulated the domestic des
tinies of my grandfather s household until the
day of her death, which Dr. Theophilus Tredick
solemnly averred was hastened by the inveter
ate habit she had contracted of swallowing
unknown quantities of hot-drops whenever she
fancied herself out of sorts. Eighty-seven
empty vials were found in a bonnet-box on a
shelf in her bedroom closet.
THE STORY OF A BAD BOY 275
The old house became very lonely when the
family got reduced to Captain Nutter and
Kitty ; and when Kitty passed away, my grand
father divided his time between Rivermouth
and New York.
Sailor Ben did not long survive his little
Irish lass, as he always fondly called her. At
his demise, which took place about six years
ago, he left his property in trust to the man
agers of a "Home for Aged Mariners." In
his will, which was a very whimsical document
written by himself, and worded with much
shrewdness, too he warned the Trustees that
when he got " aloft " he intended to keep his
" weather eye " on them, and should send " a
speritual shot across their bows" and bring
them to, if they did n t treat the Aged Mari
ners handsomely.
He also expressed a wish to have his body
stitched up in a shotted hammock and dropped
into the harbor ; but as he did not strenuously
insist on this, and as it was not in accordance
with my grandfather s preconceived notions of
Christian burial, the Admiral was laid at rest
beside Kitty, in the Old South Burying-Ground,
with an anchor that would have delighted him
neatly carved on his headstone.
I am sorry the fire has gone out in the old
ship s stove in that sky-blue cottage at the
276 THE STORY OF A BAD BOY
head of the wharf ; I am sorry they have taken
down the flagstaff and painted over the port
holes ; for I loved the old cabin as it was.
They might have let it alone !
For several months after leaving Rivermouth
I carried on a voluminous correspondence with
Pepper Whitcomb ; but it gradually dwindled
down to a single letter a month, and then to
none at all. But while he remained at the
Temple Grammar School he kept me advised
of the current gossip of the town and the do
ings of the Centipedes.
As one by one the boys left the academy
Adams, Harris, Marden, Blake, and Langdon
to seek their fortunes elsewhere, there was
less to interest me in the old seaport ; and
when Pepper himself went to Philadelphia to
read law, I had no one to give me an inkling
of what was going on.
There was not much to go on, to be sure.
Great events no longer considered it worth their
while to honor so quiet a place. One Fourth
of July the Temple Grammar School burnt
down set on fire, it was supposed, by an ec
centric squib that was seen to dart into an
upper window and Mr. Grimshaw retired
from public life, married, "and lived happily
ever after," as the story-books say.
The Widow Conway, I am able to state, did
THE STORY OF A BAD BOY 277
not succeed in enslaving Mr. Meeks, the apothe
cary, who united himself clandestinely to one
of Miss Dorothy Gibbs s young ladies, and lost
the patronage of Primrose Hall in consequence.
Young Conway went into the grocery busi
ness with his ancient chum, Rodgers RODG-
ERS & CONWAY ! I read the sign only last
summer when I was down in Rivermouth, and
had half a mind to pop into the shop and shake
hands with him, and ask him if he wanted to
fight. I contented myself, however, with flat
tening my nose against his dingy shop window,
and beheld Conway, in red whiskers and blue
overalls, weighing out sugar for a customer
giving him short weight, I would bet any
thing !
I have reserved my pleasantest word for the
last. It is touching the Captain. The Cap
tain is still hale and rosy, and if he does not
relate his exploit in the war of 1812 as spirit
edly as he used to, he makes up by relating it
more frequently and telling it differently every
time. He passes his winters in New York and
his summers in the Nutter House, which threat
ens to prove a hard nut for the destructive
gentleman with the scythe and the hour-glass,
for the seaward gable has not yet yielded a
clapboard to the east wind these twenty years.
The Captain has now become the Oldest In-
278 THE STORY OF A BAD BOY
habitant in Rivermouth, and so I do not laugh
at the Oldest Inhabitant any more, but pray in
my heart that he may occupy the post of honor
for half a century to come !
So ends the Story of a Bad Boy but not
such a very bad boy, as I told you to begin
with.
September, 1868.
THE LITTLE VIOLINIST
AND OTHER SKETCHES
THE LITTLE VIOLINIST
Weep with me all you that read
This little story ;
And know, for whom a tear you shed,
Death s self is sorry.
BEN JONSON.
THIS story is no invention of mine. I could
not invent anything half so lovely and pathetic
as seems to me the incident which has come
ready-made to my hand.
Some of you, doubtless, have heard of James
Speaight, the infant violinist, or Young Ameri-
cus, as he was called. He was born in London,
I believe, and was only four years old when
his father brought him to this country about
three years ago. Since that time he has ap
peared in concerts and various entertainments
in many of our principal cities, attracting un
usual attention by his musical skill. I confess,
however, that I had not heard of him until last
month, though it seems he had previously given
two or three public performances in the city
where I live. I had not heard of him, I say,
until last month ; but since then I do not think
282 THE LITTLE VIOLINIST
a day has passed when this child s face has not
risen up in my memory the little half -sad
face, as I saw it once, with its large, serious
eyes and infantile mouth.
I have, I trust, great tenderness for all
children; but I know that I have a special
place in my heart for those poor little creatures
who figure in circuses and shows, or elsewhere,
as " infant prodigies." Heaven help such little
folk ! It was an unkind fate that did not make
them commonplace, stupid, happy girls and
boys like our own Fannys and Charleys and
Harrys. Poor little waifs, that never know any
babyhood or childhood sad human midges,
that flutter for a moment in the glare of the
gaslights, and are gone. Pitiful little children,
whose tender limbs and minds are so torn and
strained by thoughtless task-masters, that it
seems scarcely a regrettable thing when the
circus caravan halts awhile on its route to make
a small grave by the wayside.
I never witness a performance of child-acro
bats, or the exhibition of any forced talent,
physical or mental, on the part of children,
without protesting, at least in my own mind,
against the blindness and cruelty of their par
ents or guardians, or whoever has care of
them.
I saw at the theatre, the other night, two
THE LITTLE VIOLINIST 283
tiny girls mere babies they were doing
such feats upon a bar of wood suspended from
the ceiling as made my blood run cold. They
were twin sisters, these mites, with that old
young look on their faces which all such unfor
tunates have. I hardly dared glance at them,
up there in the air, hanging by their feet from
the swinging bar, twisting their fragile spines
and distorting their poor little bodies, when
they ought to have been nestled in soft blan
kets in a cosey chamber, with the angels that
guard the sleep of little children hovering above
them. I hope that the father of those two
babies will read and ponder this page, on which
I record not alone my individual protest, but
the protest of hundreds of men and women
who took no pleasure in that performance, but
witnessed it with a pang of pity.
There is a Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Dumb Animals. There ought to be
a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Lit
tle Children ; and a certain influential gentle
man, who does some things well and other
things very badly, ought to attend to it. The
name of this gentleman is Public Opinion. 1
1 This sketch was written in 1874. The author claims for
it no other merit than that of having been among the earliest
appeals for the formation of such a Society as now exists
the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children.
284 THE LITTLE VIOLINIST
But to my story.
One September morning, about five years
and a half ago, there wandered to my fireside,
hand in hand, two small personages who re
quested in a foreign language, which I under
stood at once, to be taken in and fed and clothed
and sent to school and loved and tenderly cared
for. Very modest of them was it not ? in
view of the fact that I had never seen either of
them before. To all intents and purposes they
were perfect strangers to me. What was my
surprise when it turned out (just as if it were in
a fairy legend) that these were my own sons !
When I say they came hand in hand, it is to
advise you that these two boys were twins, like
that pair of tiny girls I just mentioned.
These young gentlemen are at present known
as Charley and Talbot, in the household, and
to a very limited circle of acquaintances out
side; but as Charley has declared his intention
to become a circus-rider, and Talbot, who has
not so soaring an ambition, has resolved to be
a policeman, it is likely the world will hear
of them before long. In the meantime, and
with a view to the severe duties of the pro
fessions selected, they are learning the alpha
bet, Charley vaulting over the hard letters with
an agility which promises well for his career
as circus-rider, and Talbot collaring the slip-
THE LITTLE VIOLINIST 285
pery S s and pursuing the suspicious X Y
Z s with the promptness and boldness of a
night-watchman.
Now it is my pleasure not only to feed and
clothe Masters Charley and Talbot as if they
were young princes or dukes, but to look to it
that they do not wear out their ingenious minds
by too much study. So I occasionally take
them to a puppet-show or a musical entertain
ment, and always in holiday time to see a pan
tomime. This last is their especial delight. It
is a fine thing to behold the business-like air
with which they climb into their seats in the
parquet, and the gravity with which they im
mediately begin to read the play-bill upside
down. Then, between the acts, the solemnity
with which they extract the juice from an
orange, through a hole made with a lead-pencil,
is also a noticeable thing.
Their knowledge of the mysteries of Fairy
land is at once varied and profound. Every
thing delights, but nothing astonishes them.
That persons covered with spangles should dive
headlong through the floor ; that fairy queens
should step out of the trunks of trees ; that the
poor wood-cutter s cottage should change, in
the twinkling of an eye, into a glorious palace
or a goblin grotto under the sea, with crimson
fountains and golden staircases and silver foliage
286 THE LITTLE VIOLINIST
all that is a matter of course. This is the
kind of world they live in at present. If these
things happened at home they would not be
astonished.
The other day, it was just before Christmas,
I saw the boys attentively regarding a large
pumpkin which lay on the kitchen floor, waiting
to be made into pies. If that pumpkin had
suddenly opened, if wheels had sprouted out
on each side, and if the two kittens playing with
an onion-skin by the range had turned into
milk-white ponies and harnessed themselves to
this Cinderella coach, neither Charley nor
Talbot would have considered it an unusual
circumstance.
The pantomime which is usually played at
the Boston Theatre during the holidays is to
them positive proof that the stories of Cinder
ella and Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack the
Giant-Killer have historical solidity. They
like to be reassured on that point. So one
morning last January, when I informed Charley
and Talbot, at the breakfast-table, that Prince
Rupert and his court had come to town,
" Some in jags,
Some in rags,
And some in velvet gown,"
the news was received with great satisfaction ;
for this meant that we were to go to the play.
THE LITTLE VIOLINIST 287
For the sake of the small folk, who could not
visit him at night, Prince Rupert was gracious
enough to appear every Saturday afternoon
during the month. We decided to wait upon
his Highness at one of his matinees.
You would never have dreamed that the sun
was shining bright outside, if you had been
with us in the theatre that afternoon. All the
window-shutters were closed, and the great
glass chandelier hanging from the gayly painted
dome was one blaze of light. But brighter
even than the jets of gas were the ruddy, eager
faces of countless boys and girls, fringing the
balconies and crowded into the seats below,
longing for the play to begin. And nowhere
were there two merrier or more eager faces than
those of Charley and Talbot, pecking now and
then at a brown paper cone filled with white
grapes, which I held, and waiting for the solemn
green curtain to roll up, and disclose the coral
realm of the Naiad Queen.
I shall touch very lightly on the literary
aspects of the play. Its plot, like that of the
realistic novel, was of so subtile a nature as not
to be visible to the naked eye. I doubt if the
dramatist himself could have explained it, even
if he had been so condescending as to attempt
to do so. There was a bold young prince
Prince Rupert, of course who went into
288 THE LITTLE VIOLINIST
Wonderland in search of adventures. He
reached Wonderland by leaping from the castle
of Drachenfels into the Rhine. Then there
was one Snaps, the prince s valet, who did not
in the least want to go, but went, and got
terribly frightened by the Green Demons of the
Chrysolite Cavern, which made us all laugh
it being such a pleasant thing to see somebody
else scared nearly to death. Then there were
knights in brave tin armor, and armies of fair
pre-Raphaelite Amazons in all the colors of the
rainbow, and troops of unhappy slave-girls, who
did nothing but smile and wear beautiful
dresses, and dance continually to the most de
lightful music. Now you were in an enchanted
castle on the banks of the Rhine, and now you
were in a cave of amethysts and diamonds at
the bottom of the river scene following scene
with such bewildering rapidity that finally you
did not quite know where you were.
But what interested me most, and what
pleased Charley and Talbot even beyond the
Naiad Queen herself, was the little violinist
who came to the German Court, and played
before Prince Rupert and his bride.
It was such a little fellow ! He was not
more than a year older than my own boys, and
not much taller. He had a very sweet, sensi
tive face, with large gray eyes, in which there
THE LITTLE VIOLINIST 289
was a deep-settled expression that I do not like
to see in a child. Looking at his eyes alone,
you would have said he was sixteen or seven
teen, and he was merely a baby !
I do not know enough of music to assert
that he had wonderful genius, or any genius
at all ; but it seemed to me he played charm
ingly, and with the touch of a natural musician.
At the end of his piece, he was lifted over
the footlights of the stage into the orchestra,
where, with the conductor s b&ton in his hand,
he directed the musicians in playing one or two
difficult compositions. In this he evinced a
carefully trained ear and a perfect understand
ing of the music.
I wanted to hear the little violin again ; but
as he made his bow to the audience and ran off,
it was with a half-wearied air, and I did not
join with my neighbors in calling him back.
"There s another performance to-night," I re
flected, " and the little fellow is n t very strong."
He came out, however, and bowed, but did not
play again.
All the way home from the theatre my chil
dren were full of the little violinist, and as they ^^
went along, chattering and frolicking in front
of me, and getting under my feet like a couple
of young spaniels (they did not look unlike two
small brown spaniels, with their fur-trimmed
290 THE LITTLE VIOLINIST
overcoats and sealskin caps and ear-lappets), I
could not help thinking how different the poor
little musician s lot was from theirs.
He was only six years and a half old, and
had been before the public nearly two years.
What hours of toil and weariness he must have
been passing through at the very time when my
little ones were being rocked and petted and
shielded from every ungentle wind that blows !
And what an existence was his now travel
ling from city to city, practising at every spare
moment, and performing night after night in
some close theatre or concert-room when he
should be drinking in that deep, refreshing
slumber which childhood needs ! However
much he was loved by those who had charge of
him, and they must have treated him kindly, it
was a hard life for the child.
He ought to have been turned out into the
sunshine; that pretty violin one can easily
understand that he was fond of it himself
ought to have been taken away from him, and
a kite-string placed in his hand instead. If God
had set the germ of a great musician or a great
composer in that slight body, surely it would
have been wise to let the precious gift ripen
and flower in its own good season.
This is what I thought, walking home in the
amber glow of the wintry sunset ; but my boys
THE LITTLE VIOLINIST 291
saw only the bright side of the tapestry, and
would have liked nothing better than to change
places with little James Speaight. To stand
in the midst of Fairyland, and play beautiful
tunes on a toy fiddle, while all the people
clapped their hands what could quite equal
that ? Charley began to think it was no such
grand thing to be a circus-rider, and the dazzling
career of policeman had lost something of its
glamour in the eyes of Talbot.
It is my custom every night, after the children
are snug in their nest and the gas is turned
down, to sit on the side of the bed and chat
with them five or ten minutes. If anything
has gone wrong through the day, it is never
alluded to at this time. None but the most
agreeable topics are discussed. I make it a
point that the boys shall go to sleep with un
troubled hearts. When our chat is ended, they
say their prayers. Now, among the pleas which
they offer up for the several members of the
family, they frequently intrude the claims of
rather curious objects for Divine compassion.
Sometimes it is the rocking-horse that has
broken a leg, sometimes it is Shem or Japhet,
who has lost an arm in disembarking from
Noah s ark ; Pinky and Inky, the kittens, and
Rob, the dog, are never forgotten.
So it did not surprise me at all this Saturday
292 THE LITTLE VIOLINIST
night when both boys prayed God to watch
over and bless the little violinist.
The next morning at the breakfast-table,
when I unfolded the newspaper, the first para
graph my eyes fell upon was this
" James Speaight, the infant violinist, died in
this city late on Saturday night. At the mati-
ne*e of the Naiad Queen, on the afternoon of
that day, when little James Speaight came off
the stage, after giving his usual violin perform
ance, Mr. Shewell l noticed that he appeared
fatigued, and asked if he felt ill. He replied
that he had a pain in his heart, and then Mr.
Shewell suggested that he remain away from
the evening performance. He retired quite
early, and about midnight his father heard him
say, Gracious God, make room for another lit
tle child in heaven No sound was heard after
this, and his father spoke to him soon after
wards; he received no answer, but found his
child dead."
The printed letters grew dim and melted
into one another, as I tried to re-read them. I
glanced across the table at Charley and Talbot
eating their breakfast, with the slanted sun
light from the window turning their curls into
real gold, and I had not the heart to tell them
what had happened.
1 The stage-manager.
THE LITTLE VIOLINIST 293
Of all the prayers that floated up to heaven,
that Saturday night, from the bedsides of sor
rowful men and women, or from the cots of
innocent children, what accents could have
fallen more piteously and tenderly upon the ear
of a listening angel than the prayer of little
James Speaight ! He knew he was dying. The
faith he had learned, perhaps while running at
his mother s side, in some green English lane,
came to him then. He remembered it was
Christ who said, " Suffer the little children to
come unto me ; " and the beautiful prayer rose
to his lips, " Gracious God, make room for an
other little child in heaven."
I folded up the newspaper silently, and