It seemed hard that my dear father and mother, so accomplished in music
themselves, should not even have taught me the musical notes, at an age
when it was so easy to learn them; and thus have made me free of that
wonder-world of sound in which I took such an extraordinary delight, and
might have achieved distinction--perhaps.
But no, my father had dedicated me to the Goddess of Science from before
my very birth; that I might some day be better equipped than he for the
pursuit, capture, and utilization of Nature's sterner secrets. There
must be no dallying with light Muses. Alas! I have fallen between
two stools!
And thus, Euterpe absent, her enchantment would pass away; her
handwriting was before me, but I had not learned how to decipher it, and
my weary self would creep back into its old prison--my soul.
[Illustration: (no caption)]
Self-sickness-_selbstschmerz, le mal do soi!_ What a disease! It is not
to be found in any dictionary, medical or otherwise.
I ought to have been whipped for it, I know; but nobody was big enough,
or kind enough, to whip me!
* * * * *
At length there came a day when that weary, weak, and most ridiculous
self of mine was driven out--and exorcised for good--by a still more
potent enchanter than even Handel or Beethoven or Schubert!
There was a certain Lord Cray, for whom Lintot had built some laborers'
cottages in Hertfordshire, and I sometimes went there to superintend the
workmen.
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