nished The Boy.
They made him eat the rest of the orange!

[Illustration: 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
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 hands; and,
literally, they covered the keys with mud.

[Illustration: "ALWAYS IN THE WAY"]

Another serious trial to The Boy was dancing-school. In the first place,
he could not turn round without becoming dizzy; in the second place, he
could not learn the steps to turn round with; and in the third place,
when he did dance he had to dance with a girl! There was not a boy in
all Charraud's, or in all Dodworth's, who could escort a girl back to
her seat, after the dance was over, in better time, or make his
"thank-you bow" with less delay. His only voluntary terpsichorean effort
at a party was the march to supper; and the only steps he ever took with
anything l