The concerts were unique enough.  They were given in a great barn of a room, gaudy with hot, soot-stained frescoes, chandeliers, walls splotched with gilt.  The audience was large, always; such as a provincial town affords:  not the purest bench of musical criticism before which to bring poor Tom.  Beaux and belles, siftings of old country families, whose grandfathers trapped and traded and married with the Indians,—­the savage thickening of whose blood told itself in high cheekbones, flashing jewelry, champagne-bibbing, a comprehension of the tom-tom music of schottisches and polkas; money-made men and their wives, cooped up by respectability, taking concerts when they were given in town, taking the White Sulphur or Cape May in summer, taking beef for dinner, taking the pork-trade in winter,—­toute la vie en programme; the debris of a town, the roughs, the boys, school-children,—­Tom was nearly as well worth a quarter as the negro-minstrels; here and there a pair of reserved, homesick eyes, a peculiar, reticent face, some whey-skinned ward-teacher’s, perhaps, or some German cobbler’s, but hints of a hungry soul, to whom Beethoven and Mendelssohn knew how to preach an unerring gospel.  The stage was broad, planked, with a drop-curtain behind,—­the Doge marrying the sea, I believe; in front, a piano and chair.

Presently, Mr. Oliver, a well-natured looking man, (one thought of that,) came forward, leading and coaxing along a little black boy, dressed in white linen, somewhat fat and stubborn in build.  Tom was not in a good humor that night; the evening before had refused to play altogether; so his master perspired anxiously before he could get him placed in rule before the audience, and repeat his own little speech, which sounded like a Georgia after-dinner gossip.  The boy’s head, as I said, rested on his back, his mouth wide open constantly; his great blubber lips and shining teeth, therefore, were all you saw when he faced you.  He required to be petted and bought like any other weak-minded child.  The concert was a mixture of music, whining, coaxing, and promised candy and cake.

He seated himself at last before the piano, a full half-yard distant, stretching out his arms full-length, like an ape clawing for food,—­his feet, when not on the pedals, squirming and twisting incessantly,—­answering some joke of his master’s with a loud “Yha! yha!” Nothing indexes the brain like the laugh; this was idiotic.

“Now, Tom, boy, something we like from Verdi.”

The head fell farther back, the claws began to work, and those of his harmonies which you would have chosen as the purest exponents of passion began to float through the room.  Selections from Weber, Beethoven, and others whom I have forgotten, followed.  At the close of each piece, Tom, without waiting for the audience, would himself applaud violently, kicking, pounding his hands together, turning always to his master for the approving pat on the head.  Songs,