ing my face
in the sheets, sobbed convulsively. She died with the fingers of her
left hand entwined in my hair.

I will not rake over this, one of the two sacred sorrows of my life;
nor could I describe the feeling of unutterable loneliness that fell
upon me. After the funeral I went to the house of my music teacher;
he had kindly offered me the hospitality of his home for so long as I
might need it. A few days later I moved my trunk, piano, my music, and
most of my books to his home; the rest of my books I divided between
"Shiny" and "Red." Some of the household effects I gave to "Shiny's"
mother and to two or three of the neighbors who had been kind to us
during my mother's illness; the others I sold. After settling up my
little estate I found that, besides a good supply of clothes, a piano,
some books and trinkets, I had about two hundred dollars in cash.

The question of what I was to do now confronted me. My teacher
suggested a concert tour; but both of us realized that I was too old
to be exploited as an infant prodigy and too young and inexperienced
to go before the public as a finished artist. He, however, insisted
that the people of the town would generously patronize a benefit
concert; so he took up the matter and made arrangements for such an
entertainment. A more than sufficient number of people with musical
and elocutionary talent volunteered their services to make a program.
Among these was my brown-eyed violinist. But our relations were not
the same as they were when we had played our first duet together. A
year or so after that time she had dealt me a crushing blow by getting
married. I was partially avenged, however, by the fact that, though
she was growing more beautiful, she was losing her ability to play the
violin.

I was down on the program for one number. My selection might have
appeared at that particular time as a bit of affectation, but I
considered it deeply appropriate; I played Beethoven's "Sonata
Pathetique." When I sat down at the piano and glanced into the faces
of the several hundreds of people who were there solely on account of
love or sympathy for me, emotions swelled in my heart which enabled me
to play the "Pathetique" as I could never again play it. When the
last tone died away, the few who began to applaud were hushed by the
silence of the others; and for once I played without receiving an
encore.

The benefit yielded me a little more than two hundred dollars, thus
raising m