University of Virginia Library

A TOUCHING STORY OF GEORGE WASHINGTON'S
BOYHOOD.

IF it please your neighbor to break the
sacred calm of night with the snorting
of an unholy trombone, it is
your duty to put up with his wretched music
and your privilege to pity him for the unhappy
instinct that moves him to delight in such discordant
sounds. I did not always think thus:
this consideration for musical amateurs was
born of certain disagreeable personal experiences
that once followed the development of a
like instinct in myself. Now this infidel over
the way, who is learning to play on the trombone,
and the slowness of whose progress is almost
miraculous, goes on with his harrowing
work every night, uncursed by me, but tenderly
pitied. Ten years ago, for the same
offense, I would have set fire to his house. At
that time I was a prey to an amateur violinist

for two or three weeks, and the sufferings I endured
at his hands are inconceivable. He
played “Old Dan Tucker,” and he never
played any thing else; but he performed that
so badly that he could throw me into fits with
it if I were awake, or into a nightmare if I
were asleep. As long as he confined himself to
“Dan Tucker,” though, I bore with him and
abstained from violence; but when he projected
a fresh outrage, and tried to do “Sweet
Home,” I went over and burnt him out. My
next assailant was a wretch who felt a call to
play the clarionet. He only played the scale,
however, with his distressing instrument, and I
let him run the length of his tether, also; but
finally, when he branched out into a ghastly
tune, I felt my reason deserting me under the
exquisite torture, and I sallied forth and burnt
him out likewise. During the next two years I
burned out an amateur cornet player, a bugler,
a bassoon-sophomore, and a barbarian whose
talents ran in the base-drum line.

I would certainly have scorched this trombone
man if he had moved into my neighborhood
in those days. But as I said before, I
leave him to his own destruction now, because

I have had experience as an amateur myself,
and I feel nothing but compassion for that kind
of people. Besides, I have learned that there
lies dormant in the souls of all men a penchant
for some particular musical instrument, and an
unsuspected yearning to learn to play on it,
that are bound to wake up and demand attention
some day. Therefore, you who rail at
such as disturb your slumbers with unsuccessful
and demoralizing attempts to subjugate a
fiddle, beware! for sooner or later your own
time will come. It is customary and popular
to curse these amateurs when they wrench you
out of a pleasant dream at night with a peculiarly
diabolical note; but seeing that we are
all made alike, and must all develop a distorted
talent for music in the fullness of time, it is
not right. I am charitable to my trombone
maniac; in a moment of inspiration he fetches
a snort, sometimes, that brings me to a sitting
posture in bed, broad awake and weltering in
a cold perspiration. Perhaps my first thought
is, that there has been an earthquake; perhaps
I hear the trombone, and my next thought is,
that suicide and the silence of the grave would
be a happy release from this nightly agony;
perhaps the old instinct comes strong upon me
to go after my matches; but my first cool, collected
thought is, that the trombone man's destiny
is upon him, and he is working it out in
suffering and tribulation; and I banish from
me the unworthy instinct that would prompt
me to burn him out.

After a long immunity from the dreadful insanity
that moves a man to become a musician
in defiance of the will of God that he should
confine himself to sawing wood, I finally fell a
victim to the instrument they call the accordeon.
At this day I hate that contrivance as fervently
as any man can, but at the time I speak of I
suddenly acquired a disgusting and idolatrous
affection for it. I got one of powerful capacity,
and learned to play “Auld Lang Syne” on it.
It seems to me, now, that I must have been
gifted with a sort of inspiration to be enabled,
in the state of ignorance in which I then was,
to select out of the whole range of musical
composition the one solitary tune that sounds
vilest and most distressing on the accordeon.
I do not suppose there is another tune in the
world with which I could have inflicted so
much anguish upon my race as I did with that
one during my short musical career.

After I had been playing “Lang Syne”

about a week, I had the vanity to think I
could improve the original melody, and I set
about adding some little flourishes and variations
to it, but with rather indifferent success, I
suppose, as it brought my landlady into my
presence with an expression about her of being
opposed to such desperate enterprises. Said
she, “Do you know any other tune but that,
Mr. Twain?” I told her, meekly, that I did
not. “Well, then,” said she, “stick to it just
as it is; don't put any variations to it, because
it's rough enough on the boarders the way it is
now.”

The fact is, it was something more than simply
“rough enough” on them; it was altogether
too rough; half of them left, and the
other half would have followed, but Mrs. Jones
saved them by discharging me from the premises.

I only staid one night at my next lodging-house.
Mrs. Smith was after me early in the
morning. She said, “You can go, sir; I don't
want you here; I have had one of your kind
before—a poor lunatic, that played the banjo
and danced breakdowns, and jarred the glass
all out of the windows. You kept me awake all

night, and if you was to do it again, I'd take
and mash that thing over your head!” I could
see that this woman took no delight in music,
and I moved to Mrs. Brown's.

For three nights in succession I gave my new
neighbors “Auld Lang Syne,” plain and unadulterated,
save by a few discords that rather
improved the general effect than otherwise.
But the very first time I tried the variations the
boarders mutinied. I never did find any body
that would stand those variations. I was very
well satisfied with my efforts in that house,
however, and I left it without any regrets; I
drove one boarder as mad as a March hare,
and another one tried to scalp his mother. I
reflected, though, that if I could only have been
allowed to give this latter just one more touch
of the variations, he would have finished the
old woman.

I went to board at Mrs. Murphy's, an Italian
lady of many excellent qualities. The very
first time I struck up the variations, a haggard,
care-worn, cadaverous old man walked into my
room and stood beaming upon me a smile of
ineffable happiness. Then he placed his hand
upon my head, and looking devoutly aloft, he

said with feeling unction, and in a voice trembling
with emotion, “God bless you, young
man! God bless you! for you have done that
for me which is beyond all praise. For years
I have suffered from an incurable disease, and
knowing my doom was sealed and that I must
die, I have striven with all my power to resign
myself to my fate, but in vain—the love of life
was too strong within me. But Heaven bless
you, my benefactor! for since I heard you play
that tune and those variations, I do not want to
live any longer—I am entirely resigned—I am
willing to die—in fact, I am anxious to die.”
And then the old man fell upon my neck and
wept a flood of happy tears. I was surprised
at these things; but I could not help feeling a
little proud at what I had done, nor could I
help giving the old gentleman a parting blast
in the way of some peculiarly lacerating variations
as he went out at the door. They doubled
him up like a jack-knife, and the next time he
left his bed of pain and suffering he was all
right, in a metallic coffin.

My passion for the accordeon finally spent
itself and died out, and I was glad when I
found myself free from its unwholesome influence.

While the fever was upon me, I was
a living, breathing calamity wherever I went,
and desolation and disaster followed in my
wake. I bred discord in families, I crushed
the spirits of the light-hearted, I drove the melancholy
to despair, I hurried invalids to premature
dissolution, and I fear me I disturbed the
very dead in their graves. I did incalculable
harm, and inflicted untold suffering upon my
race with my execrable music; and yet to atone
for it all, I did but one single blessed act, in
making that weary old man willing to go to his
long home.

Still, I derived some little benefit from that
accordeon; for while I continued to practice on
it, I never had to pay any board — landlords
were always willing to compromise, on my
leaving before the month was up.

Now, I had two objects in view in writing the
foregoing, one of which was to try and reconcile
people to those poor unfortunates who feel
that they have a genius for music, and who
drive their neighbors crazy every night in trying
to develop and cultivate it; and the other
was to introduce an admirable story about Little
George Washington, who could Not Lie,

and the Cherry-Tree — or the Apple-Tree — I
have forgotten now which, although it was told
me only yesterday. And writing such a long
and elaborate introductory has caused me to
forget the story itself; but it was very touching.