I might have been seventeen or eighteen at this time; I do not recall the precise year. I was doing well with my shoemaking, and when this trouble grew on my poor father I brought my bench into the kitchen, so that I might have him always in sight. This was well enough for every day, but already I was beginning to be sent for here and there, among the neighbouring villages, to play the fiddle. The people of my father's kind were passing away, those who thought music a device of the devil, and believed that dancing feet were treading the road to hell. He was still a power in our own village; but in the country round about the young folks were learning the use of their feet, and none could hinder them, being the course of nature, since young lambs first skipped in the meadows. It was an old farmer, a good, jolly kind of man, who first gave me the name of "Rosin." He sent for me to play at his barn-raising, and a pretty sight it was; a fine new barn, Melody, all smelling sweet of fresh wood, and hung with lanterns, and a vast quantity of fruits and vegetables and late flowers set all about. Pretty, pretty! I have never seen a prettier barn-raising than that, and I have fiddled at a many since then. Well, this old gentleman calls to me across the floor, "Come here, young Rosin!" I remember his very words. "Come here, young Rosin! I can't get my tongue round your outlandish name, but Rosin'll do well enough for you." Well, it stuck to me, the name did, and I was never sorry, for I did not like to carry my father's name about overmuch, he misliking the dancing as he did. The young folks caught up an old song, and tagged that name on too, and called me Rosin the Bow. So it was first, Melody; but there are two songs, as you know, my dear, to the one tune (or one tune is all I know, and fits both sets of words), and the second song spells the word "Beau," and so some merry girls in a house where I often went to play, they vowed I should be Rosin the Beau. I suppose I may have been rather a good-looking lad, from what they used to say; and to make a long story short, it was by that name that I came to be known through the country, and shall be known till I die. An old beau enough now, my little girl; eighty years old your Rosin will be, if he lives till next September. I took to playing the air whenever I entered a room; it made a little effect, a little stir,--I was young and foolish, and it took little to please me in those days. But I have always thought, and think still, that a man, as well as a woman, should make the best of the mortal part of him; and I do not know why we should not be thankful for a well-looking body as for a well-ordered mind. I cannot abide to see a man shamble or slouch, or throw his arms and legs about as if they were timber logs. Many is the time I have said to my scholars, when I was teaching dancing-school,--great lumbering fellows, hulking through a quadrille as if they were pacing a raft in