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Instrumental music next turned my head, or, more definitely—a violin. I bought a fiddle on my own account. Of course my father saw the instrument; if I could keep it out of his sight I could not very well keep it out of his hearing. Then, besides, little boys should not be deceptive. He says: “What are you going to do with that?” I says: “I’m going to learn to play it.” Then he asked me where I had bought it, and I told him like a dutiful son—“Tom Carrodus’s in Church Green.” He summoned my mother and asked: “Mally, what dos’ta think o’ this lot?” She—good woman—said it was only another antic of her boy’s, and “let him have his own way.” But my father, on the contrary, got rather nasty about the matter, remarking that if I didn’t take the thing away he would put it into the fire. He said he was sure it would only turn out a public house “touch,” and informed me that it was only one in a thousand who ever got to be anything worth listening to. He endeavoured to impress upon me what a nuisance the old fiddler was on the Fair Day; and “concluded a vigorous speech” by again reminding me that if I didn’t take the fiddle out of his sight he would burn it. He did give me the chance to play out of his sight; but, knowing, young as I was, that the unexpected sometimes happens, I decided to get rid of “the thing,” as my father was pleased to call it. Fiddle and I parted company the very day after we came to know each other.