After three weeks of arduous practice, during which Mrs. A. several times suggested that it was brutal that Twiddler didn’t kill that suffering cow and put it out of its misery, I conquered the first three notes; but there I stuck.  I could play “No One to—­” and that was all.  I performed “No One to—­” over eight thousand times; and as it seemed unlikely that I would ever learn the whole tune, I determined to try the effect of part of it on Mrs. A. About ten o’clock one night I crept out to the front of the house and struck up.  First, “No One to—­” about fifteen or twenty times, then a few of those groans, then more of the tune, and so forth.  Then Butterwick set his dog on me, and I suddenly went into the house.  Mrs. A. had the children in the back room, and she was standing behind the door with my revolver in her hand.  When I entered, she exclaimed,

“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come home!  Somebody’s been murdering a man in our yard.  He uttered the most awful shrieks and cries I ever heard.  I was dreadfully afraid the murderers would come into the house.  It’s perfectly fearful, isn’t it?”

[Illustration:  A SCARED FAMILY]

Then I took the revolver away from her—­it was not loaded, and she had no idea that it would have to be cocked—­and went to bed without mentioning the horn.  I thought perhaps it would be better not to.  I sold it the next day; and now if I want music I shall buy a good hand-organ.  I know I can play on that.

* * * * *

As music and sculpture are the first of the arts, I may properly refer in this chapter to some facts relative to the condition of the latter in the community in which I live.  Some time ago there was an auction out at the place of Mr. Jackson, and a very handsome marble statue of William Penn was knocked down to Mr. Whitaker.  He had the statue carted over to the marble-yard, where he sought an interview with Mr. Mix, the owner.  He told Mix that he wanted that statue “fixed up somehow so that ’twould represent one of the heathen gods.”  He had an idea that Mix might chip the clothes off of Penn and put a lyre in his hand, “so that he might pass muster as Apollo or Hercules.”

But Mix said he thought the difficulty would be in wrestling with William’s hat.  It was a marble hat, with a rim almost big enough for a race-course; and Mix said that although he didn’t profess to know much about heathen mythology as a general thing, still it struck him that Hercules in a broad-brimmed hat would attract attention by his singularity, and might be open to criticism.

Mr. Whitaker said that what he really wanted with that statue, when he bought it, was to turn it into Venus, and he thought perhaps the hat might be chiseled up into some kind of a halo around her head.

But Mix said that he didn’t exactly see how he could do that when the rim was so curly at the sides.  A halo that was curly was just no halo at all.  But, anyway, how was he going to manage about Penn’s waistcoat?  It reached almost to his knees, and to attempt to get out a bare-legged Venus with a halo on her head and four cubic feet of waistcoat around her middle would ruin his business.  It would make the whole human race smile.