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We were a musical family. My elder brother and I played the harmonica, or French harp, as we called it then, and my sister performed capably upon the organ, the guitar and the mandolin. She was particularly adept upon the guitar, and enjoyed an enviable reputation for the way she whanged out the fandango pieces and the tune descriptive of the Battle of Sebastopol, which requires much banging and thumping and difficult fingering. My father was a fiddler. He did not know one note from another, but he could tuck his fiddle under his chin, tap the floor with his foot and play with great spirit such tunes as “Fisher’s Hornpipe,” “Billy in the Low Ground,” “Turkey in the Straw” and “The Arkansas Traveler.” But his muse was dumb if he could not pat his foot. I could also beat a snare drum passably, and later I learned to play the violin, the cornet and the alto horn, so that we had quite a family orchestra, and our house was frequently filled with music. Anyhow we played these instruments.
But not on Sunday. Our Preacher assured us that music on Sunday, except in church, was sinful and an affront to the Heavenly Father, and on Saturday night, after a final orgy of melody, my mother gathered up the guitars and mandolins, the fiddles, the drums and the harmonicas and all of the other musical instruments, even the jew’s-harp, and put them under lock and key until Monday morning. We could not even play a comb on Sunday, although on rare occasions, usually when the Preacher was there and gave permission and absolution from sinful consequences, I was permitted to bring out my big harmonica, from which I could produce the sonorous tones of an organ, and play church hymns such as “Rock of Ages” and “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” But I was forbidden to play “Turkey in the Straw” or “The Mocking Bird” with variations. The latter was my favorite tune, because by jiggling my hand over the harmonica I could produce a very effective trill which I fondly believed was as beautiful as the singing of a canary, but if I launched into such a tune on Sunday I had debauched the Sabbath, and my harmonica was taken from me. And frequently I myself was taken into the woodshed and taught a proper respect for the Lord’s Day.
Under no circumstances could we play the fiddle in our house on Sunday, because of all music, that which came from the fiddle was the most sinful. It was the Devil’s instrument. No fiddling on Sunday had been a cardinal rule of my father’s family since Colonial days in Virginia, and later in Mississippi and in North Carolina my grandmother had compelled her Negro slaves to put up their musical instruments from Saturday night to Monday morning. Eventually I took lessons from the music teacher in Farmington and learned to call the fiddle a violin, and as I grew older I played when I pleased, although not very successfully. But so long as the instrument remained a fiddle it was played in our house on Sunday on only one occasion. And then the performance was a neighborhood scandal, and only the fact that the instrument had been played by a Preacher saved us from getting into trouble with God and His representatives in Farmington.
This tweaking of the heavenly nose occurred during a District Conference, when the visiting preachers were parceled out among the faithful of the local Methodist church. Two came to us, one a young man filled with good works and a constant, fretful worry over the low estate of the human race, and the other an old man who had been a wicked sinner in his time and who had never been able to resist an occasional temptation to have a good time. He was a Virginian and an accomplished fiddler, but he could play nothing but dance music, which the darkies had taught him. The first Sunday they were at our house my father admitted that we had a fiddle, and the old Preacher demanded that it be brought out for him to perform upon. My father and mother were in terror all afternoon for fear that the neighbors would hear the wailing of the fiddle, although they prevailed upon the old man to use a mute and the music could hardly be heard outside the room. We were particularly afraid that a devout Sister, who lived next door to us and whose principal occupation was going to church, might hear it; if she had it would have been nothing short of a catastrophe, for the tale would have been all over town before nightfall. So we closed the windows and the doors, muted the fiddle and put the old Preacher in the parlor, where he fiddled until he had sinned enough. But even then several people passing along the street heard it, and I do not think that we ever quite lived it down. We could convince no one that the fiddle had been played by a Man of God. Everyone knew better; Men of God did not do such things.