While the boy was drinking in, with rapture, the applause bestowed upon his musical talents, his master earnestly deprecated, and violently opposed the cultivation of them. In the contentions between this applause and that opposition--between the charming flattery of the one, and the mortifying severity of the other, the boy took that side which it was natural for him to prefer; and genius, the parent of courage and enterprise, suggested to him from time to time a variety of expedients for baffling all his master’s designs, and eluding his sharpest vigilance. He collected around him a number of boys of about his own age, who by a weekly subscription which they contrived to collect, rented a cellar in an obscure retired alley--provided themselves with musical instruments, and, with paper decorations and patchwork, formed a little theatre, whither they resorted, every moment they could snatch by stealth or pretext, from their parents’ and masters’ control, in order privately to practise music and dancing, to spout and to perform (in their way) plays, operas and farces. At this time the whole amount of the schooling which the boy had received, barely enabled him to read a chapter in the testament, to scrawl a very indifferent manuscript, and to form an indistinct notion of the two or three first rules of vulgar arithmetic. Such was the cunning and address with which these youngsters _managed_ their theatre, that they enjoyed it several months without THE OLD ONES being able to discover where they wasted their time. One answer always served JOHN when questioned by his master--“Where have you been miching now, you young rascal?”--“NOWHERE sir!” This NOWHERE (so very indefinite) the master construed into _anywhere_ in the streets, playing at marbles, top, or chuck-farthing; but of the true place he had not the most distant conception. After some time they began to apprehend that their retreat would be discovered either by accident or the vigilance of the old folks, and this had the effect of increasing their caution and sharpening their ingenuity and cunning. They affected to loiter and play in distant streets, and courted detection there, in order to elude any suspicions that might lead to a discovery of their playhouse; and as they never ventured to indulge their ambition by figuring away before any but their own little society, and were the only auditors, as well as the actors of their pieces, they calculated upon being able to carry on their scheme till time should set them free from parental control; provided there should be no treachery among themselves. However, their confidence in one another was great. “Of one only,” said Hodgkinson, to this writer, “we entertained the least doubt, and you will smile to hear the cause of it: it was, because he was the son of an attorney--he was bottom however to the last, and is now as worthy a man as any in society.”