nd
vegetables and late flowers set all about. Pretty, pretty! I have never
seen a prettier barn-raising than that, and I have fiddled at a many
since then. Well, this old gentleman calls to me across the floor, "Come
here, young Rosin!" I remember his very words. "Come here, young Rosin!
I can't get my tongue round your outlandish name, but Rosin'll do well
enough for you." Well, it stuck to me, the name did, and I was never
sorry, for I did not like to carry my father's name about overmuch, he
misliking the dancing as he did. The young folks caught up an old song,
and tagged that name on too, and called me Rosin the Bow. So it was
first, Melody; but there are two songs, as you know, my dear, to the
one tune (or one tune is all I know, and fits both sets of words), and
the second song spells the word "Beau," and so some merry girls in a
house where I often went to play, they vowed I should be Rosin the Beau.
I suppose I may have been rather a good-looking lad, from what they used
to say; and to make a long story short, it was by that name that I came
to be known through the country, and shall be known till I die. An old
beau enough now, my little girl; eighty years old your Rosin will be, if
he lives till next September. I took to playing the air whenever I
entered a room; it made a little effect, a little stir,--I was young and
foolish, and it took little to please me in those days. But I have
always thought, and think still, that a man, as well as a woman, should
make the best of the mortal part of him; and I do not know why we should
not be thankful for a well-looking body as for a well-ordered mind. I
cannot abide to see a man shamble or slouch, or throw his arms and legs
about as if they were timber logs. Many is the time I have said to my
scholars, when I was teaching dancing-school,--great lumbering fellows,
hulking through a quadrille as if they were pacing a raft in
log-running,--"Don't insult your Creator by making a scarecrow of the
body He has seen fit to give you. With reverence, He might have given it
to one of better understanding; but since you have it, for piety's sake
hold up your head, square your shoulders, and put your feet in the first
position!"

But I wander from the thread of my story, as old folks will do. After
all, it is only a small story, of a small life; not every man is born to
be great, my dear. Yet, while I sat on my shoemaker's bench, stitching
away, I thought of greatness, as I suppos