The Boy was taught, from the earliest awakening of his reasoning powers, that truth was to be told and to be respected, and that nothing was more wicked or more ungentlemanly than a broken promise. He learned very early to do as he was told, and not to do, under any consideration, what he had said he would not do. Upon this last point he was almost morbidly conscientious, although once, literally, he “beat about the bush.” His aunt Margaret, always devoted to plants and to flowers, had, on the back stoop of his grandfather’s house, a little grove of orange and lemon trees, in pots. Some of these were usually in fruit or in flower, and the fruit to The Boy was a great temptation. He was very fond of oranges, and it seemed to him that a “home-made” orange, which he had never tasted, must be much better than a grocer’s orange; as home-made cake was certainly preferable, even to the wonderful cakes made by the professional Mrs. Milderberger. He watched those little green oranges from day to day, as they gradually grew big and yellow in the sun. He promised faithfully that he would not pick any of them, but he had a notion that some of them might drop [p 23]
off. He never shook the trees, because he said he would not. But he shook the stoop! And he hung about the bush, which he was too honest to beat. One unusually tempting orange, which he had known from its bud-hood, finally overcame him. He did not pick it off, he did not shake it off; he compromised with his conscience by lying flat on his back and biting off a piece of it. It was not a very good action, nor was it a very good orange, and for that reason, perhaps, he went home immediately and told on himself. He told his mother. He did not tell his aunt Margaret. His mother did not seem to be as much shocked at his conduct as he was. But, in her own quiet way, she gave him to understand that promises were not made to be cracked any more than they were made to be broken—that he had been false to himself in heart, if not in deed, and that he must go back and make it “all right” with his aunt Margaret. She did not seem to be very much shocked, either; he could not tell why. But they punished The Boy. They made him eat the rest of the orange!
THE HOUSE OF THE BOY’S GRANDFATHER—CORNER OF HUDSON AND NORTH MOORE STREETS
He lost all subsequent interest in that tropical glade, and he has never cared much for domestic oranges since.
Among the many bumps which are still conspicuously absent in The Boy’s phrenological development are the bumps of Music and Locality. He [p 24]
whistled as soon as he acquired front teeth; and he has been singing “God Save the Queen” at the St. Andrew’s Society dinners, on November the 30th, ever since he came of age. But that is as far as his sense of harmony goes. He took music-lessons for three quarters, and then his mother gave it up in despair. The instrument was a piano. The Boy could not stretch an octave with his right hand, the little finger of which had been broken by a shinny-stick; and he could not do anything whatever with his left hand. He was constantly dropping his bass-notes, which, he said, were “understood.” And even Miss Ferguson—most patient of teachers—declared that it was of no use.
The piano to The Boy has been the most offensive of instruments ever since. And when his mother’s old piano, graceful in form, and with curved legs which are still greatly admired, lost its tone, and was transformed into a sideboard, he felt, for the first time, that music had charms.
He had to practise half an hour a day, by a thirty-minute sand-glass that could not be set ahead; and he shed tears enough over “The Carnival of Venice” to have raised the tide in the Grand Canal. They blurred the sharps and the flats on the music-books—those tears; they ran the crotchets and the quavers together, and, rolling down his cheeks, they even splashed upon his not very clean little [p 25]
hands; and, literally, they covered the keys with mud.
