The Little Violinist

The Little Violinist, by Thomas
Bailey Aldrich

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Title: The Little Violinist
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23355]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE LITTLE VIOLINIST.
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company

Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901
Weep with me, all you that read This little story; And know, for whom
a tear you shed, Death's self is sorry.
Ben Jonson.
This story is no invention of mine. I could not invent anything half so
lovely and pathetic as seems to me the incident which has come
ready-made to my hand.
Some of you, doubtless, have heard of James Speaight, the infant
violinist, or Young Americus, as he was called. He was born in London,
I believe, and was only four years old when his father brought him to
this country, less than three years ago. Since that time he has appeared
in concerts and various entertainments in many of our principal cities,
attracting unusual attention by his musical skill. I confess, however,
that I had not heard of him until last month, though it seems he had
previously given two or three public performances in the city where I
live. I had not heard of him, I say, until last month; but since then I do
not think a day has passed when this child's face has not risen up in my
memory--the little half-sad face, as I saw it once, with its large, serious
eyes and infantile mouth.
I have, I trust, great tenderness for all children; but I know that I have a
special place in my heart for those poor little creatures who figure in
circuses and shows, or elsewhere, as "infant prodigies." Heaven help
such little folk! It was an unkind fate that did not make them
commonplace, stupid, happy girls and boys like our own Fannys and
Charleys and Harrys. Poor little waifs, that never know any babyhood
or childhood--sad human midges, that flutter for a moment in the glare
of the gaslights, and are gone. Pitiful little children, whose tender limbs
and minds are so torn and strained by thoughtless task-masters, that it
seems scarcely a regrettable thing when the circus caravan halts awhile
on its route to make a small grave by the wayside.
I never witness a performance of child-acrobats, or the exhibition of
any forced talent, physical or mental, on the part of children, without

protesting, at least in my own mind, against the blindness and cruelty of
their parents or guardians, or whoever has care of them.
I saw at the theatre, the other night, two tiny girls--mere babies they
were--doing such feats upon a bar of wood suspended from the ceiling
as made my blood run cold. They were twin sisters, these mites, with
that old young look on their faces which all such unfortunates have. I
hardly dared glance at them, up there in the air, hanging by their feet
from the swinging bar, twisting their fragile spines and distorting their
poor little bodies, when they ought to have been nestled in soft blankets
in a cosey chamber, with the angels that guard the sleep of little
children hovering above them. I hope that the father of those two babies
will read and ponder this page, on which I record not alone my
individual protest, but the protest of hundreds of men and women who
took no pleasure in that performance, but witnessed it with a pang of
pity.
There is a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dumb Animals.
There ought to be a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Little
Children; and a certain influential gentleman, who does some things
well and other things very badly, ought to attend to it. The name of this
gentleman is Public Opinion.{1}
1 This sketch was written in 1874. The author claims for it no other
merit than that of having been among the earliest appeals for the
formation of such a Society as now exists-- the Massachusetts Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
But to my story.
One September morning, about five years and a half ago, there
wandered to my fireside, hand in hand, two small personages who
requested in a foreign language, which I understood at once, to be taken
in and fed and clothed and sent to school