of fair pre-Raphaelite amazons in all the colors
of the rainbow, and troops of unhappy slave-girls, who did nothing but
smile and wear beautiful dresses, and dance continually to the most
delightful music. Now you were in an enchanted castle on the banks of
the Rhine, and now you were in a cave of amethysts and diamonds at
the bottom of the river--scene following scene with such bewildering
rapidity that finally you did not quite know where you were.

But what interested me most, and what pleased Charley and Talbot even
beyond the Naiad Queen herself, was the little violinist who came to the
German Court, and played before Prince Rupert and his bride.

It was such a little fellow! He was not more than a year older than my
own boys, and not much taller. He had a very sweet, sensitive face, with
large gray eyes, in which there was a deep-settled expression that I do
not like to see in a child. Looking at his eyes alone, you would have
said he was sixteen or seventeen, and he was merely a baby!

I do not know enough of music to assert that he had wonderful genius,
or any genius at all; but it seemed to me he played charmingly, and with
the touch of a natural musician.

At the end of his piece, he was lifted over the foot-lights of the stage
into the orchestra, where, with the conductor's _baton_ in his hand, he
directed the band in playing one or two difficult compositions. In this
he evinced a carefully trained ear and a perfect understanding of the
music.

I wanted to hear the little violin again; but as he made his bow to the
audience and ran off, it was with a half-wearied air, and I did not join
with my neighbors in calling him back. "There 's another performance
to-night," I reflected, "and the little fellow is n't very strong." He
came out, however, and bowed, but did not play again.

All the way home from the theatre my children were full of the little
violinist, and as they went along, chattering and frolicking in front of
me, and getting under my feet like a couple of young spaniels (they
did not look unlike two small brown spaniels, with their fur-trimmed
overcoats and sealskin caps and ear-lappets), I could not help thinking
how different the poor little musician's lot was from theirs.

He was only six years and a half old, and had been before the public
nearly three years. What hours of toil and weariness he must have been
passing through at the very time when my little ones were being rocked
and pette