Within a week I had procured a fine one, also an instruction book. The new study became so absorbing that I forgot all about Unnatural History, for the time being. It was not long before I could play _Down on the Suwanee River_, _The Last Rose of Summer_, and _Home, Sweet Home_. The instrument had a wonderfully fine tone, and, for the first time, I began to understand the wild, universal passion to learn music.
I discovered that the pleasure is mainly selfish, the joy being principally that of the performer. The one who plays, or rather works, an instrument of any sort, can never give others as much pleasure as he gives himself. With the voice, the principle is the same, though greatly intensified. Conversation exemplifies it in lesser degree, though not much less. I remembered that when I was very young, a number of other rising citizens used to battle with me for the control of the harmonica which I found in my infantile sock one radiant Christmas morning. “The child is father of the man,” said Wordsworth, though how much his word’s worth it is not for me to say.
As I played, one day, I felt bright eyes upon me. I was taking deep accordion plaits in the silence, but I was not wholly oblivious to my surroundings. “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast”—how wonderfully true that is! Already I looked forward to the time when all the wood-folk should come and stand around me, open-mouthed and rapt, while I worked my concertina.
Every day, when I began to practise my technical exercises, I felt the bright eyes. When an eye is laid on a Little Brother of the Woods, he can feel it all through his system. I was not sufficiently interested, however, to investigate.
One bright morning, when I was practising that beautiful song beginning: “Knock, and the world knocks with you; boost, and you boost alone,” I heard a corroborative thump from the woods.
It was really a tremendous noise and seemed as though it must have been made by a Moose, an Elephant, or some animal equally large. At brief intervals the sound was repeated and at last I concluded that someone in my immediate neighbourhood was giving a pound party.
The next day, according to the entries in my observation ledger, I had filled the concertina with cooky crumbs and had begun to play a cake-walk, adding a little milk to the interior occasionally to produce a more liquid tone. From the distant shrubbery, from the same quarter where I had repeatedly felt the bright eyes, I heard a thump-thump-thump, perfectly metrical, and in time with my merry tune. It was accompanied by a soft patter, seemingly from very small hands. With a sudden reversion to my former interests I threw the concertina aside, and dashed into the forest.