One day he persuaded his mother to let him “try just once” to play his brother’s silver cornet. She was so surprised at his performance that she asked Ed to hear him. As a result Herbert was allowed to play in his brother’s small orchestra at the opening of a new restaurant. The fifty cents he received was the first money he had ever made from music. This spurred him on to further practice and to begin saving money to buy his own cornet. He shoveled snow furiously at twenty-five cents a job, but at the end of a month his cornet seemed far away. His father, usually so generous, refused to contribute a cent to this cause. Discouraged, Herbert decided to try for a job playing with the Government Regiment Band as he had heard that they furnished instruments free to those who did not own them. In spite of the fact that he was only fourteen, he was accepted and took the oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria for service. The bandmaster gave him a cornet, a plain brass one with badly corroded slides; but he happily cleaned it up and polished it till it glistened like new. No one worked harder than Herbert. With distended cheeks and bulging eyes he practiced faithfully. His big day soon came. At the opening of Canadian Parliament he put on his regimental uniform to perform guard duty. In twelve below zero weather the band marched through snowy and icy streets. At first he could not keep step and hold his mouthpiece in place. Then the cornet froze to his lips. It not only made no sound, but it took the skin when he removed it. His proud schoolmates who trooped along home with him after the parade did not know that their hero had not played a note during the entire march. That fall after a hard fought football game, Herbert contracted pneumonia and was kept in bed from December till April. His brother Ed who was now playing a violin in an orchestra felt so sorry for Herbert that he allowed him to use his cornet. Father relented enough to say, “Get well, son, and I’ll let you play the cornet since nothing else will do. That is, if you behave yourself and keep your school work up to the mark.” Herbert returned to school and was graduated with his class in 1884. Then his family moved again--this time to Indianapolis, Indiana. There, fortunately, each musician had his own room. Herbert and his cornet, Ern and his trombone, Ed and his violin, Mr. Clarke and his organ. Besides, the boys and their father began playing together. Many unsigned notes were left in the Clarke’s mailbox, all expressing the same thought--that the family was the “neighborhood nuisance” and that “they should take their instruments and move to the country.” Herbert got a job playing at a roller skating rink for fourteen dollars a week and proudly began to pay board at home, a dollar a week. Now he was making enough money to buy his own cornet. Although it was not a silver-plated one like Ed’s, it was a prized possession.