“Why don't you get together and play like this often?” inquires the sister of the bass-viol, when the audience at last, with arms full of steamer-rugs and cushions, comes trailing in.
The piccolo, passing sandwiches, looks up with hearty response. “Yes, why can't we?” he asks. “After the reception, let's try to keep it up.”
The rest of us, fastening the covers around our instruments, give enthusiastic consent. “Every other Monday, let's meet without fail,” we say. But in our hearts we know that we shall not. We shall all be busy—all sorts of things will happen to prevent—and the weeks will fly. Yet we know that sooner or later our trio will meet again—probably for a desperate rehearsal some months hence, just in time for the next event where we are asked to play.
THE RETURN OF A, B, C
That is, I used to hope that they were returning. My neighbor's small son, Tony, aged six, needed them. He needed them to learn to read with. This was before I had any first-hand evidence about modern school methods. I saw school only through Tony.
Tony was able to read, “over to school,” such excerpts as the following: “The gingerbreadboy went clickety-clack down the road.” “Sail far, sail far, o'er the fabulous main!” “Consider, goat, consider!” “You have made a mistake, Mr. Alligator.” Just why, I reflected, should “Mr. Alligator” and “fabulous” be introduced to a pleasant child like Tony, who had not as yet been allowed to meet “cat,” “dog,” “hen,” “red,” “boy,” “bad,” and a great many other creatures really necessary to a little boy's existence?
His mother knew that Tony was not learning to read very fast. She argued with me a little on principle. She said that James Whitcomb Riley wrote “fabulous.” I reminded her in a neighborly way that Mr. Milton wrote the “Areopagitica,” thought by some to be a good sort, but that, until Tony knew his letters, the “Areopagitica” would be almost wasted on him. I would have stepped in at this point myself and ponied him a bit, for pure love, had it not been for the fact that I hated to have him get a sensible A, B, or C mixed up with such corrupting associates as a considering goat or a mistaken alligator. And he would certainly have mixed them up. He would never have been able in this world to decide in his little mind what relation “consider” had to A,B,C. And he would have been quite excusable.
I began to think that his mother was too optimistic. She was trying to console herself by the fact that, if she should die, Tony could at least order gingerbread off a menu card. But could he? The sad fact that my neighbor overlooked was that he didn't know “gingerbread” when he saw it, but just “gingerbreadboy”! Perhaps even at that, Tony might not have starved, for even gingerbreadboys are edible, if Tony really could have recognized that. But he couldn't. Not outside the confines of his “reading-book”—Heaven save the mark! A modern word-fiend tried to explain to me here, that, after having learned “gingerbreadboy,” a child comes naturally by three words (and even four if they allowed “gin” in the school curriculum)—namely, “ginger,” “bread,” and “boy.” But Tony didn't. I tried him. He looked upon “ginger” as an entire stranger, interesting in form, perhaps, but still foreign. Something, I was convinced, was wrong. And I attributed this state to the fact that Tony didn't know A, B, and C.
Just as I reached the high noon of this conviction, I was drawn by the most curious of circumstances into the business of teaching little children to read. I held the novel position of being besought to bring all my heresies and all my notions, and join the influenza-thinned ranks of the teaching profession. The Board of Education said that it was desperate. It must have been.