On my first Sunday I took Starwood to church,--that is, we preceded Aronach, who was lecturing Iskar, and sent us on beforehand. The little one was bright this morning, and as I looked upon his musically built brow, and trembling color, and expressive eyes,--blue as the air at evening, and full of that sort of light,--I could not make clear to myself how it was that he so disliked his work, and drooped beneath it in the effort to master his frail body by his struggling soul. We had turned into the place of the church,--the leafless lindens were whispering to it,--and we rested by the stone basin, while the bells came springing through the frost-clear day like--yet how unlike--England! I was afraid my small companion would be cold, and I put one of his long little hands into my pocket with my own, while I made him tuck the other into both his warm gloves, till, by degrees,--having coaxed and comforted him to the utmost,--he told me more about himself than I had known before. He was extremely timid to talk, shy as a fawn, even to me. But at last I made out satisfactorily the secret of his antipathy to his violin. I cannot remember all his words,--besides, they were too infantine to write; but he described himself as having spent that most forlorn of all untended childhoods which befalls the motherless offspring of the needy artist in England. His father had lived in London and taught music, but had left him constantly alone; and I also discovered he had been, and was still, an organist. The child assured me his mamma had been a beautiful player, but that no one ever opened her grand piano, which stood in a parlor above the street. "I always knew I was to grow up to music," said Starwood; "for mamma had told me so, and she taught me my notes when I was only four years old. When she died, no one taught me; and while papa was out all day, I played with my toys and sat upon the stairs. One day some men came up and nearly fell over me. I ran into the parlor, and they came too. They knocked the piano about, and began to take its legs off. I called out to them, 'You must not touch that,--it is my mamma's!' "They did not take any notice, but made a great noise, and at last they carried it away--all of it--upon their shoulders. I saw it go downstairs, and I sat there all day and cried; I was very miserable, I know. Papa came home at last; when I was so unhappy I thought I must die, and it was all in the dark, and very cold. He carried me in his arms, and made me tell him why I cried. I said 'Because of the piano;' and he told me he had sold it because it was so large, and because he wanted the money. I know he was very poor, Charles; for a gentleman who was very kind to him gave him some more money to send me here, or I could not have come. But I wish he had kept me at home and taught me himself."