ll a tooth for him some
time! This, of course, was a guerdon for the future, but it seemed
pathetically distant to the lad who had never had a toothache in his
life. He had to plead with Cyse Higgins for a week before that prudent
young farmer would allow him to touch his five-dollar fiddle. He
obtained permission at last only because by offering to give Cyse his
calf in case he spoiled the violin. "That seems square," said Cyse
doubtfully, "but after all, you can't play on a calf!" "Neither will
your fiddle give milk, if you keep it long enough," retorted Tony; and
this argument was convincing.

So great was his confidence in Tony's skill that Squire Bean trusted his
father's violin to him, one that had been bought in Berlin seventy years
before. It had been hanging on the attic wall for a half century, so
that the back was split in twain, the sound-post lost, the neck and the
tailpiece cracked. The lad took it home, and studied it for two whole
evenings before the open fire. The problem of restoring it was quite
beyond his abilities. He finally took the savings of two summers'
"blueberry money" and walked sixteen miles to Portland, where he bought
a book called The Practical Violinist. The Supplement proved to be
a mine of wealth. Even the headings appealed to his imagination and
intoxicated him with their suggestions,--On Scraping, Splitting, and
Repairing Violins, Violin Players, Great Violinists, Solo Playing,
etc.; and at the very end a Treatise on the Construction, Preservation,
Repair, and Improvement of the Violin, by Jacob Augustus Friedheim,
Instrument Maker to the Court of the Archduke of Weimar.

There was a good deal of moral advice in the preface that sadly puzzled
the boy, who was always in a condition of chronic amazement at the
village disapprobation of his favorite fiddle. That the violin did not
in some way receive the confidence enjoyed by other musical instruments,
he perceived from various paragraphs written by the worthy author of The
Practical Violinist, as for example:--

"Some very excellent Christian people hold a strong prejudice against
the violin because they have always known it associated with dancing and
dissipation. Let it be understood that your violin is 'converted,' and
such an obligation will no longer lie against it. ... Many delightful
hours may be enjoyed by a young man, if he has obtained a respectable
knowledge of his instrument, who otherwise would find the time hang
heavy