A bunch of keys where they were found and what they might have unlocked - A Christmas book - Tom Hood Various

Hey, it's Jemma Spag from The Psychology of Your 20s.

In a very special episode brought to you by Alliant University, I ask Dr. Sandra Espinosa, what does therapy actually do? From the science behind therapeutic change to how clinicians approach the work to why therapy can feel so difficult to access or even stigmatized in some families and communities, we pull back the curtain on the therapeutic process and explore what meaningful growth actually looks like.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest0:28

I didn't go to therapy until my mid- late 20s, I think it was almost.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest0:33

And it was a career that I was pursuing and I was still nervous.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest0:37

I am a much better wife, daughter, friend, mom, because I'm a therapist.

What makes a good therapist?

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest0:46

We wanna hear your story.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest0:48

I tell my, my clients, "You are the expert in your story, and I am gonna be a witness to that."

You can listen to this full episode of The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Section 0 of A Bunch of Keys, Where They Were Found, and What They Might Have Unlocked: A Christmas Book, edited by Tom Hood.

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Preface by Tom Hood.

Once upon a time, and I venture to think that a very seasonable commencement for a preface, once upon a time there were half a dozen young writers who, having to toil for their daily bread all the rest of the year, desired at this period of it to make a Christmas pudding.

The good old custom of Christmas annuals seemed to them one which should not be allowed to die out altogether, and they set about planning a volume after that model.

The following system of stories is what they decided upon.

One of their number having been elected to the honorable post of editor, it became his duty to write this preface.

But for that duty, I am inclined to think that post would have been a sinecure.

This Christmas volume, then, has something more than ordinary of a Christmas nature about it, for it is, in real truth, the growth of friendly communion, of pleasant chance of an evening, of fellowship of taste and feeling.

It is a pet child, a hobby of ours in short, and a labor of love.

If the public, therefore, like the notion as well as we do, next year will see a successor to A Bunch of Keys.

And I need hardly add that we hope when the festive season returns again, with its pageantry and mummies, that we shall have been encouraged to bring our hobby out again in the procession, and that our readers may have no reason to sigh, "For oh, for oh, the hobby horse is forgot." End of Section 0.

Recording by Stefan.

Section 1 of A Bunch of Keys, Where They Were Found and What They Might Have Unlocked, A Christmas Book, edited by Tom Hood.

This is a LibriVox recording.

All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kristen Edwards.

The Bunch of Keys, The Ring, by Thomas W. Robertson.

Chapter 1.

Concerning a Big Black Box in a Spare Bedroom.

Suppose, Bob, we force the lock.

I should perhaps mention for the instruction and amusement of the reader, but as I never wrote a book before and am aged fourteen, errors must be excused, that Bob, although my brother, was two years younger.

That is, two years younger than I.

I.We presented a marked contrast, we two brothers.

I was fond of reading, and even at the early age of eight had composed verses.

Bob, although good-natured, was not a clever scholar, but he was a first-rate fighter, jumper, climber, and tumbler.

We got on very well, and were always together, but as a companion from an intellectual point of view, Bob was nowhere.

We lived with our father in an old-fashioned rookery of an house, a mile away from any other, in the Midland counties.

Our mother had died when Bob was a baby.

Father had been a disappointed man.

He ought to have had a large fortune, but somehow or other didn't get it, in consequence of chancery.

So he took our house, which had a few acres of ground attached to it, grass and arable, and went up to London every now and then to look after his law business.

We had a housekeeper, old Martha, who looked after us, and a servant called Jane, who looked after Martha.

And she was a very curious person, was that Jane.

Why, once she tried to drown herself in the beck, because her sweetheart had proved false to her, and married somebody else.

And yet, Jane was a very plain girl, with a nose like a piece of bottle India rubber.

She could hardly read, and couldn't write at all.

But as I was saying, we lived in this old-fashioned rookery, and went every day a mile across the fields to the Reverend Mr. Dewhurst's to school.

It wasn't a regular school, the Reverend Dewhurst's, but he used to teach us.

He was curate to the church at Thorpe Croft, was the Reverend Dewhurst, and a great friend of father's.

And Mrs. Dewhurst was a very nice woman, and their daughter Amy was a very nice girl.

No imagination, but a very nice girl for all that.

I remember the gentleman who owned the box coming to stop a week with father.

I remember him particularly well, though I was only six years old.

I have a wonderful memory, because the end of his nose was like a sponge, a red sponge.

He was a tall man and very pale, and wore a wig, and had a voice so deep and so musical that it was beautiful to listen to it.

While he was stopping with us, the Reverend Dewhurst used to come over to supper with father almost every evening.

The three of them had been schoolfellows when boys, Rugbians, and they used to sit up over their whiskey and water till early in the morning, at least so I have heard Martha say.

And I remember myself hearing father tell Mrs. Dewhurst, when she complained of the Reverend Dewhurst's hours, that he, the tall pale gentleman, was the only man who understood the art of reciting poetry as it ought to be recited.

Well, it was he, the stranger, who brought the box with him, and it was placed where he slept in our spare bedroom.

It was a very big black box, and he had no other luggage.

One morning I was sent off to the Reverend Dewhurst in a jiffy, and I stopped with Mrs. Dewhurst and Amy for a week.

I have been told since that I was sent to be out of the way, for that the tall pale gentleman, not coming down to breakfast at the usual time, my father went up to his room to call him, and found him dead in his bed.

He was buried at Thorpecroft Churchyard, and the Reverend Dewhurst read the burial service over him.

I was sent back home, and the big black box had never been moved from our spare bedroom, nor had the broad strap round it ever been unbuckled.

Years rolled by, and I merged from childhood into youth.

I learned rapidly, the Reverend Dewhurst said too rapidly, and encouraged by my brother Bob's approval, and the bright eyes of Amy, I looked forward to a glorious career.

I was intensely fond of reading, and as Mrs. Dewhurst had all the new novels sent to her every month in a green box from the library, I had my fill of romance, sentiment, and adventure.

Books formed my mind.

Wild but youthful, I was in intellect a man.

Even at what some persons would consider the early age of eleven, I had formed an attachment for Ms. Dewhurst, my Amy, a love which I feel will last my life.

It was so pleasant to go out mushrooming together on the common with a book, to sit beside a streamlet beneath the bending branches of a willow, looking over the same page while Bob gathered the mushrooms, for poor Bob had no sentiment.

Give him his ditch and his bird's nest, and he cared for nothing else.

Amy Dewhurst, what a name for a poet's bride! But the fatal time for parting came.

The knell was tolled.

The command was given.

The fiat went forth.

Amy was to go to boarding school.

I will not attempt to describe my grief, or how poor dear Bob endeavored to console me with the pineapple rock which he that day purchased at Thorpecroft Feast.

Dear, stupid old Bob, how could he understand my feelings? I went to the feast the next day to banish my regret, and I tried to obtain a temporary distraction from a blighted heart by visiting all the shows.

We, Bob and I, saw the Leicestershire Giant, the pink-eyed albino lady with the long white hair, the boa constrictor and the armadillo, the Battle of Navarino, and the Siege of Seringapatam, an Indian chieftain fresh from his native wilds, and a small circus with some capital tumbling by the professors Diavolini.

I thought the circus performance would have driven Bob mad.

He did nothing but tumble and stand on the bare back of our old pony for days after.

I think the showman took a deal of money, for I saw the Indian chieftain quaffing firewater at the Four Alls with his proprietor and tamer.

It was about this time, the sad time of Amy's departure, that I began thinking about the big black box in the spare bedroom.

I don't know why I connected these two apparently opposing facts, but I did, and I wondered what was inside the box.

I asked Martha, but she said she didn't know, nor was she conscious of the existence of a key.

This was in the beginning of December.

My father had gone up to the Swampscott station six miles from our house and started for London to look after his law business.

I remember he said before he went that this time he hoped to bring back news one way or the other.

The idea of the contents of the box haunted me.

In fact, it divided my mind with thoughts of my Amy.

I held long counsels with Bob, who always agreed with me in everything, but made no suggestions from himself.

It was in the tool house in the garden, and he was standing on his head when I said to him the words with which I commenced the story.

Suppose, Bob, we force the lock.

Suppose we do, said Bob from his inverted position on the floor.

Father has gone to London, I remarked.

Yes, answered Bob, walking on his hands through the door into the garden.

Then there is Martha.

Blow, Martha, said Bob, doing handsprings right along the gravel path.

Bob, I shouted after him.

Yes, he replied on his head again and clapping his feet together.

If without any personal inconvenience you could manage to stand upon your feet like a Christian, we might discuss this subject like intellectual beings.

Bob's body went down full length on the gravel with a whack, and then he threw himself upon his feet after the manner of Signor Antonio Diavolini.

Suppose we force the lock.

And see what's inside? That follows as a matter of course.

Bob crowed like a cock, fluttered his elbows, and said, Martha.

I grasped his arm and whispered in his ear, Tonight, when she is asleep, the household wrapped in slumber.

Right you are, he interrupted, and immediately threw handsprings in the direction of the tool house.

He was enough to provoke a saint.

Where are you going? I shouted.

Chisel, he replied, and vanished from my sight.

End of section one.

Section two of A Bunch of Keys, Where They Were Found and What They Might Have Unlocked, A Christmas Book, edited by Tom Hood.

This is a LibriVox recording.

All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Wayne Cook.

The Bunch of Keys, The Ring, by T.W. Robertson.

Chapter two, Concerning the Contents of the Big Black Box.

Bob, at my direction, secreted some lucifers, wrapped them in a piece of paper, and put them in his pocket.

He also procured about four inches of candle, which he kept in the crown of his cap.

Martha remarked that evening that we seemed in an unusual hurry to get to bed.

At half-past eight, she tucked us up, kissed us, and wished us good night, and took our light away.

Little did she think of the project that was afoot.

Steve, said Bob, when we were alone in the dark, when Martha kissed us, I didn't like to think of what we were going to do.

Why not? I asked.

It seemed so sneakish.

Are you afraid? I confess I began to feel a bit nervous myself.

No, I'm not afraid, but I hate to know anything that everybody else doesn't know.

Bob was very stupid.

We didn't play that night at Wild Horse of the Prairies, our constant custom before going to sleep, but lay watching and watching and waiting and waiting for Martha and Jane and John Simpson to go to bed.

John Simpson was a laborer who always slept in the house when father was away.

Oh, that night.

How long every minute seemed, and how I thought of the big black box standing in the spare bedroom.

I grew almost frightened, for I imagined that when we opened it, we might find a dead body, or the spirit of the tall pale gentleman to whom in life it had belonged.

Or if a dreadful head should raise up and say, Is it time? As in the oil jar and the forty thieves.

I almost repented our project and wished we had never undertaken it.

But then we had the four inches of candle, the lucifers, and the chisel, and of what good were those implements unless we used them? Bob was soon fast asleep, snoring like a corncrake.

At last I heard them go to bed.

Jane first, then John Simpson, Martha last, and then followed another tedious, wretched time.

I calculated that it would take them one hour to go fast asleep.

The hour or longer, I know not, passed, and I made an attempt to wake Bob.

I might as well have striven to move Thrope Croft Church.

He turned and blunged and kicked till at last I was forced to resort to a wet towel across his eyes.

He woke.

What's up? he asked.

The box.

All right, he said, and got out of bed immediately.

Crash, smash, went the water jug which I had placed by the bedside to cold pig Master Bob with.

We both jumped into bed again and closed our eyes tightly as if in the profoundest slumber.

What a fool you are, I whispered under the bedclothes.

What did you put the water jug in the way for? he replied.

Did you upset it? "Yes; didn't you hear it trickling?" "Get up and wipe it," I said, "or it'll run through into the ceiling below." Bob seized his shirt and the piece of carpet by our bedside, and the drip, drip of the water ceased.

The noise had not aroused anybody, so we slipped across the room to our door, every board creaking as if asking Martha to come down and catch us.

We got out into the passage.

The spare bedroom was on the same floor, so that we soon reached it.

The key was in the lock as usual, but it was so tight that I could not turn it.

"Let me try," whispered Bob.

And he turned it in a moment, and we stood in the spare bedroom.

"Where's the lucifers?" I asked.

"Haven't you got them?" "No; haven't you?" "I thought you had them in your pocket." "I haven't a pocket in my nightshirt, have I?" said the aggravating Bob.

"Haven't you brought the bit of candle either?" I inquired.

"No." "Where are they?" "In our room." "Why didn't you bring 'em with you?" "I forgot." He had no forethought.

"I'll go fetch 'em," he said.

I did not like to be left in the spare bedroom alone, so I went and returned with him, armed with the candle, matches, and chisel.

We closed the door.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen," said Bob, who was for frivolous turn even at that eventful moment, "just a-going to begin." And we lit the candle, and there was the big black box in its accustomed corner, the strap buckle glistening in the light as if daring us to unfasten it.

The spare bed loomed white upon us like a ghost, and every hole in the embroidery above its watchful fringe seemed like an eye upon us.

I felt cold all over, particularly at the feet.

"Now, Steve, go it," said Bob.

"Bob," I suggested, "let's toss up for it." "For what?" "To see who is to do it." "Do what?" "Open the it, I mean." "We haven't got any coppers." "Then let's pull hairs for it." And we each pulled a hair out of our heads, an invention of mine which we always adopted when straws and grass were not available.

Bob, having pulled out the shorter hair, lost.

I held the candle while he unbuckled the strap, as cool as Nossler.

"Mind you don't make a noise," I whispered.

Bob took the chisel.

I shut my eyes tight, heard a slight sound.

"All right," from Bob, and the deed was done.

The box was open.

A newspaper was spread upon the top of the contents.

We pulled it aside, and the first thing we saw were three swords, one long thin one with a dark blue steel handle and mountings, one broader one with a white handle and a cold cross hilt, a short broad sword in a red gold scabbard which I knew at once to be of the sorts of sword used by the ancient Romans, confound 'em.

"Hurrah!" shouted Bob in a whisper as we each drew a weapon and waved it over our heads.

Think of finding three swords, not one, but three.

Robinson Crusoe was not more delighted when he discovered the bell of gunpowder on the wreck.

We continued our search.

The next thing we took out was a lot of garments tied up together in a sort of towel.

We opened the packet and found a tiger skin, a white shirt with gold fringe at the ends, no arms but brass ornaments all over it, a pink undershirt and long stockings coming up to the waist, three or four gold chains, a pair of sandals, ancient Romans, a bird of paradise cut in half, and a book of the play of Pizarro or the Spaniards in Peru by Brinsley Sheridan.

We next found a beautiful Turkish dress which we afterwards were told was the dress of Othello, the Moor of Venice, and a Scotch dress for Macbeth, and a dress for the crooked-backed tyrant Richard III, and Hamlet's dress, all black and a hat to match, exactly like the feathers on a hearse, and a dagger, and several other things needless to mention, besides a lot of playbooks and half an old letter.

In the letter it said, "My dear sir, I agree to your terms and we will, if it will suit you, commence on the seventeenth, which will give us Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for Coventry, Thursday and Friday for Worcester, thus leaving the Saturday for you at Birmingham, if you can so arrange it.

With regard to—" And the letter said no more.

Bob and I each put on a hat and feathers, drew a sword, and danced with joy until we were out of breath.

We then fought a combat, carefully avoiding hitting the swords together for fear of making a noise.

I looked to the candle, which we had placed in the fireplace, and saw that there was no more than an inch left.

We hastily returned our newfound treasures, all but the swords and the dagger, those we would not part with, to the box, and after a difficulty, for we could not pack well, got the lid down and the strap buckled tightly over it.

The hasp of the lot, though broken, looked all right, and with a sword on each shoulder and a dagger in my teeth like Robinson Crusoe with his two guns, I crept back to bed, followed by Bob.

End of section two.

Section three of A Bunch of Keys: Where They Were Found and What They Might Have Unlocked.

A Christmas book, edited by Tom Hood.

This is a LibriVox recording.

All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Wayne Cook.

The Bunch of Keys: The Ring by Thomas W. Robertson.

Chapter three, Concerning the Adventures into Which the Contents of the Big Black Box Led Us.

The next few days we employed in secretly carrying the chief parts of our treasures to the cave.

The cave had formerly been a cowshed.

In fact, it was an abandoned and deserted cowshed.

We kept no cow, but were supplied by John Simpson's brindle, and it was in the cave that we smoked bits of cane and prepared merry devils for the fifth of November.

We had splendid days in the cave with our swords and our new dresses.

Bob used to be Macduff and I Macbeth.

I was King Richard and Bob the Earl of Richmond.

Hamlet and Shylock were never cared about.

I used to like to play the tyrant and to die.

At the same time, I always wished to be the conqueror too.

If I could, I would have been both victor and vanquished, which the Reverend Dewhurst has since told me was a thoroughly tragic dramatic aspiration.

At last, tired of taking it from books, I invented a new play out of my own head.

The idea came upon me all at once without thinking.

Thoughts always do come upon me in that way, which is indeed the distinguishing difference between me and Bob, who never has ideas, but who is a very good fellow and always ready to follow where superior intellect may lead.

My new idea was to act the savage and his keeper, Bob being stupid to be the savage and I being intellectual, the keeper.

I dressed up Bob in the white Turkish trousers, tucking them up to make them short enough, in the white shirt with the gold fringes, the tiger skin over his shoulders, and birds of paradise, which were struck into a gold band upon his head.

Thus attired, Bob used to tumble and knock himself about as we had seen the wild Indian at Thorpecroft Feast.

Bob had a large chain round his neck, which I held at one end and armed with a whip, with which I frequently threatened and sometimes used upon him, often saying, Back, sir.

Ah, dare you? Made him crouch and go through his performance.

It was ten nights after opening the box, and Bob and I were in bed, Bob fast asleep, and I grasping the trusty dagger which I ever kept beneath my midnight pillow, when another thought flashed across me.

I immediately nudged Bob, who, selfish fellow, was a long time before he would wake sufficiently to understand me, and said to him, Bob, suppose we were to run away for a week or fortnight and get money as the men did at the feast by being wild Indian and keeper.

Bob's reply was, Umplumps.

But I soon made him hear and understand to the best of his capacity.

We should get plenty of money, said I.

See life and the country, enjoy adventures, and get back home again before father returns from London.

Eh, brave Elizondo de Molina, what sayest thou? Telly in the morning, muttered my unworthy brother, and went to sleep again.

The next day I talked him over, and we discussed, that is, I talked and he listened, the plan of the campaign.

I have forgotten to mention that I had an excellent voice, and was a first-rate sentimental singer and reciter, and, as I said, between my songs and recitations and his wild Indian, we could not want.

We scraped together four and ninepence in cash.

Bob conveyed my best suit to the cave, and two nights after, when Martha, John Simpson, and Jane had gone to bed, we slipped the lock of our front door.

It was a cold, bright, green, moonlit night, and ran to the cave, attired ourselves, and the world was before us.

We walked all night across country in order to get as far away as we could from Martha and Thorpecroft.

We were both in high spirits, having a bottle of beer, which the poor Indian, with untutored mind, carried in a sling.

About ten o'clock the next morning, being both very hungry, I went into a village.

I have not the slightest notion where it was, and bought, at a shop where they seemed to sell everything, a loaf of bread, a pound of cheese, and a half-pound of salt.

I then went to the public house.

It was the sign of the plough, and bought a pint and a half of beer.

People asked me questions, but I was too much for them.

I had not read the Arabian Nights for nothing, and when I returned to Bob, whom I had left in a hollow tree, like Olson, I found him crying.

I reproached him with his unmanliness, and consoled him with the bread and cheese, which we were so greedy as to eat all up.

After our repast, we went to sleep in each other's arms.

We always used to lie back to back when we were in bed at home.

I don't know how long we slept, but when we awoke it was still daylight.

We were hungry again, and quarreled about the bread and cheese we had eaten before we slept.

We walked for three hours, still cross-country, and we saw the smoke from the chimneys of another village or town.

It was quite dark when we reached it.

I bought some more bread and cheese at a little shop, and then I found we had only two shillings and a halfpenny left.

So when Bob had refreshed himself, I said to him it was high time we should begin to exhibit.

I pulled the chain out of Bob's pocket he had on his own trousers under the Turkish ones and fastened him up.

From a field we scrambled through a hedge and dropped down into a main road, passed through a turnpike, and went downhill towards the town.

A stream of light came from the open door of a public-house, and I heard men talking within.

Now, Bob, I said, now is the time.

Remember to growl and snatch when I pull at the chain.

I walked boldly in, leaving Bob outside, and I found from a dozen to twenty men seated on a settle round a large fireplace, smoking and drinking.

They were all talking, but when they saw me they laid off.

Gentlemen, said I, taking off my cap they were very common men, navigators, or something of that sort, but I said gentlemen to please them would you like to see the wild Indian which I have just brought from Liverpool? Three or four of them said, What, lad? And I repeated my question.

What wild Indian? Asked one very big man whom the others called Joe.

The men grinned and said, Oh, ay, lad, bring him in.

I went out, cracked my whip, and led Bob in by the chain.

This is the wild Indian, gentlemen, I said.

He is one of the tribe of Delaware, and he answers to the name of Uncas.

He was a chieftain in his own tribe, and was known upon the war-trail as the Artful Panther.

Back, sir.

Hey, it's Jemma Spag from The Psychology of Your 20s.

In a very special episode brought to you by Alliant University, I ask Dr. Sandra Espinosa, what does therapy actually do? From the science behind therapeutic change to how clinicians approach the work to why therapy can feel so difficult to access or even stigmatized in some families and communities, we pull back the curtain on the therapeutic process and explore what meaningful growth actually looks like.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest33:24

I didn't go to therapy until my mid, late 20s, I think it was almost.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest33:29

And it was a career that I was pursuing and I was still nervous.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest33:33

I am a much better wife, daughter, friend, mom, because I'm a therapist.

What makes a good therapist?

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest33:43

We want to hear your story.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest33:44

I tell my clients, you are the expert in your story and I am going to be a witness to that.

You can listen to this full episode of The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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I raised my whip, for Uncas, the artful panther of the tribe of Delaware, advanced towards me, grinning with cannibalical intent, but a skilful cut of the whip upon the shoulders where it didn't hurt subdued him, and he shrank back dismayed.

The men laughed loudly.

The landlady, a very stout woman, and a servant, a trifle stouter, came in.

Lad, bless the boys, said the landlady.

Can you do aught else? If it is your pleasure, madam, I said, for I saw the glibness of my tongue had struck her, I will make him come through the whole of his performance.

Come, sir, come! The artful panther uttered the Indian exclamation, Tear! and again showed signs of disobedience, but I was not to be trifled with, and beat him.

Having brought him to reason, he stood upon his head, tumbled through handsprings, picked up his sixpence with his mouth, and finished by throwing himself in a posture of humility at the feet of the master, who stood pointing gracefully at him with his whip.

The spectators laughed and applauded, gave us both beer, and the man they called for asked me if the Indian wasn't a very wild one.

Oh, very wild indeed, sir, I replied.

You must have had a deal of trouble to tame him, continued he.

A very great deal, sir.

He's only just fresh caught.

At which there was another laugh.

What did you say his name was? Asked Joe.

Uncas saw the artful panther.

Artful panther, said the landlady, and the men laughed again.

You didn't learn to talk as you talk among the Indians, I expect, said Joe.

No, sir, I answered.

And how is it, my pretty boy, as you are gone about the country this how with your Indian? Asked the landlady.

Expects down the road, mother, said a light-haired, blue-eyed young man.

On the road or not, Bill Gastelow, there where there no business to be, said the woman.

Who's your father and mother, me by? I have no mother, said I.

Take a drop more beer, said the giant Joe, and the Indian too, if he be such a wild bird.

Thank you, sir.

I never allow him to drink beer.

It might fly to his blood.

At which there was another roar of laughter.

And where's your father? Asked the landlady.

He, I answered, is far, far away.

God misses.

Don't ask the land more questions.

It's no business of yourn, said the woman's husband.

See, lad, can you do what else? The Indian Uncas, said I, has concluded his performance, but, ladies and gentlemen, with your kind permission, I will sing you a sentimental song.

The proposal was received with great favour, and Uncas, or Bob, being accommodated with a corner to crouch in, and a bone of shoulder of mutton for the gratification of his ferocious native instincts, I sang Isabel.

It was one of my best musical performances.

I was loudly applauded, and the young man, Bill Gastelow, laid his head upon the wooden table before him, and sobbed audibly.

His mates told him to cheer up, and the servant girl whispered to me that Bill's sweetheart had proved false to him, and gone off with the recruiting sergeant, and from the servant girl's look and manner, I thought that she felt she would like to console Bill Gastelow.

I sang more songs, and at last the giant Joe said, Now, mates, these here boys can't do this for nothing.

They got our living to got to well as us, so I shall go round with the hat, and recollect as they've done all our work, and there ain't no sub.

A collection was made, and the sum of three shillings and fourpence, all in coppers, was handed to us.

Mother, said big Joe to the landlady, I'm going down to the checkers to see Jim Crosby, and I'll take these two boys with me.

Perhaps they'll make a trifle more there.

Now, turning to me, will you swear your affidavit that as there's a wild Indian and yourn won't hurt me? I'll take care that he doesn't hurt you, sir, I said, grasping my whip.

You'll be responsible for me, said Joe, for I've a wife and family, and if it kills and eats me, what'll become of them? So Joe took us to the checkers, which was a larger public house than the one we had left, and full of navigators and their wives and sweethearts.

And Uncas performed again, and I sang several songs, and we made eight shillings and tenpence, and we went to bed thoroughly tired in a little bedroom which the landlady, at Joe's request, led to us.

We slept till four o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, and took our breakfast at the same time that the landlord and landlady took their tea.

Before we left, I asked the landlady what we owed her, and she said a shilling, sixpence for our suppers, and sixpence for our breakfast.

Then there's the bed, said I.

Never mind that, was her reply.

We don't charge little boys like you for beds.

I mentioned this to Uncas, or Bob, and asked him whether he did not think it rather rude of her.

No, said Bob.

I think it was very kind.

I pointed out to him that we had plenty of money to pay with, but he only answered by proposing toffee at a sweet stuff shop.

But I reminded him that an Indian chieftain should not think of toffee, that a raw fowl or the flesh of an opossum with the skin torn off its back was the mildest refreshment he could think of.

Oh, brother, answered Bob.

I dare say Indian chieftains eat sweet stuff when they're young, fast enough.

We were now in the gaslighted streets, and a crowd soon gathered round us.

I secured Bob by his chain, and made in the direction of what had been pointed out to me for the Crown and Anchor, the commercial and family hotel, it was called.

I asked to be allowed to exhibit in the parlour, but a very proud young lady behind a glass bar would not hear of it, and a waiter, a tall, insolent beast, pushed me from the door, and threatened to send for a constable.

I felt I could have killed him, for the little boys about yelled and hooted us.

My spirits were low for the whole evening.

We exhibited in two very humble public houses, but we made only two shillings altogether.

We got to bed at a washerwoman's, and slept in the same room with her mangle, and the mangle seemed to fascinate the Indian Bob, who would insist on getting out of bed to turn it.

I explained to the woman that this being the first civilized mechanical contrivance he had seen connected with the washing of linen his curiosity was natural.

I could not help smarting under the humiliation and outrage we had suffered from that brute of a waiter, and indeed during the whole of our adventures it was singular that whenever we went into a big hotel frequented by tradesmen we were always scouted or treated uncivilly, whereas at a roadside public-house where laborers and those sorts of people were drinking we were welcomed and rewarded.

After this manner several days passed away, and we heard nothing of any offer at pursuit either by Martha or by the Reverend Dewhurst.

Twice we were questioned by rural policemen with swords by their sides as to who we were, but the answers I gave were considered satisfactory.

I always said I was an orphan and that Bob was an Indian boy, the property of my late father, who had long lived in America, and the sole remains of the wreck of our former fortunes.

The weather grew very cold, and the snow came down in large flakes.

The cold was a peculiar sort of cold, too.

It wasn't in the snow, but in the wind.

No matter how fast we walked, the red stuff Bob had upon his face and arms, the same stuff used by the ploughmen on Plough Monday, never came off from perspiration.

We got enough money just to live upon, but we never did so well as on the first day.

We discovered that cold boiled bacon was a better investment than cheese.

We stopped one whole day in one place to get Bob's roller shirt and Othello's Turkish trousers washed.

There was great fun made by the women about washing the gold fringe, which never looked well afterwards.

We reached a little village, which was all excitement on account of the holding of a county court, and a great case between the parish clerk and a Quaker about the non-payment of a sum of sixpence yearly, which the Quaker would not pay because it went against his conscience to pay it, and the parish clerk would not go without because it went against his conscience to go without it.

Nobody would listen to us, and we went away sadly with only tenpence left in our pockets.

We were told of another village five miles off, but the country all about was white, and we missed our way trying for a short cut.

The snow came down furiously, and the wind cut us like a knife.

We wandered and wandered about till sundown, then till dark, and we began to cry bitterly, for I thought of home and Martha and Mrs. Dewhurst and Amy, and I reproached Bob, in his nasty ugly white dress and his brown face, for having persuaded me to run away from them.

At last we saw a light and made for it.

We found a large farmhouse all by itself, with stone posts and chains before it, and at the gate stood an elderly man without a handkerchief round his neck and no hat on.

He had a very red face and wild eyes, and he was talking loudly to himself.

We asked him if he would witness our performance, but he swore at us terribly, said we were a couple of young vagrants who wanted to set fire to his stacks, and that he would set his dogs on us and worry us, and he went away, and we heard the clanking of chains and the barking of six or eight large dogs, and we ran as hard as our legs could carry us.

We paused at last when out of hearing of the dogs and looked around.

We could hardly see a yard before us for the drifting snow, and the wind howled about us madly.

We plodded on, our feet sinking deep at every step.

Bob walked first, and I trod in the footprints he made.

There was an odd, cold, fresh smell in the air.

We were alone upon a sward of heath, going up a hill, and the wind grew colder and colder.

Our feet began to freeze and our limbs to grow numb.

I had ceased to weep, and Bob kept turning his head back and saying as well as he could through the mouthfuls of snow that if we kept walking we must come out somewhere.

The cold grew more and more intense as we toiled on, and Bob in his white dress seemed to mingle with the falling flakes, when suddenly I heard a sharp cry, and he sank from my sight.

I threw myself flat upon my face.

Bob had perished.

My gallant, generous, noble brother was no more.

And by my act, but for my persuasions, he would never have started on this despicable adventure, and could never have fallen into the ravine where he lay stiff and dead.

Oh, the supreme bitterness of those moments! Oh, the agonies of self-reproach! Oh, my dear, dear home, my kind father and the Dewhursts, why did I leave you? Why did I ever open the big black box in the small bedroom? Why had I ever been born? All of these thoughts rushed through my aching brain as I lay sobbing, the snow falling over and covering me like a shroud.

The wind swooped and howled with the savage triumph of a fiend, and such was the disordered state of my intellect that I thought it roared my name.

Steve! I felt I could contend no more, but should die upon that frozen bed.

Again the wind howled.

Steve! No, not the wind.

Bob.

It was Bob's voice.

Bob's.

I was on my feet in an instant.

I placed my hands before my mouth trumpet-wise and roared out, Bob! His voice, coming from where I could not guess, though it sounded as from a deep well, answered, "Steve." "Where?" "This way.

Forward.

All right.

Down here." He was alive.

Bob was alive.

I crept forward slowly on my face, swimming as it were in the thick snow.

Bob's voice guided me, and I floundered on until I felt myself at the edge of a sort of hill or precipice.

I cleared the snow from my mouth and shouted.

"Here I am," answered Bob.

"Where?" "Down here.

Come on.

It's quite warm.

It isn't far." "Hurt yourself?" "Not much." "Broken anything?" "Yes." "What?" "The beer bottle." "I mean limbs." "No.

A few bruises.

It's jolly warm down here.

Wait till I light a match.

You'll see." By the light of the Lucifer I saw Bob's white face, for it had been completely washed by the snow, six feet below me.

"Stop till I light the candle," said Bob.

We always carried a candle and Lucifers.

"Then you can come and see to drop." "The wind will blow it out," I gasped.

"There's no wind down here.

It's sheltered.

Now." The candle was lighted, and I dropped down into the ravine.

I say ravine because I didn't know what else to call it.

It seemed as if the earth had cracked and a sort of hole or cavern had been formed.

There was only a space a foot wide above our heads.

Snow had drifted to the left of us, and on the right was earth and brushwood.

The top of the bank arched over, so that it was more like being in an underground mud cavern or cow shed than anything else.

The intense and immediate comfort was the warmth, the absence of wind, and our cheeks and hands tingled with the pricks of pins and needles.

"Steve," said Bob.

"What?" "Let's light a fire." "Before we do that, Bob," I answered, "we'll do something else." "What?" "Say a prayer." And we knelt down and said the evening prayer taught us by Mr.

Dewhurst, and a return thanks for the deliverance of my dear brother from a terrible death.

Bob then limped to the brushwood, hacked it down with a short Roman sword, and kindled a fire.

The smoke was rather tiresome, but the heat was most grateful.

And we ate the remains of our provisions, a quartering loaf and a very small piece of bacon, with an intense relish.

As for drink, as Bob said, there was snowballs enough for a large family.

We then threw on more brushwood, using the Roman sword as a poker, and went to sleep, the tiger skin serving for a quilt.

I woke before Bob.

Our fire was out.

I looked upward and saw a strip of sky over the roof of our cave.

The snow had ceased to fall.

It was still dark.

I resolved to look out.

So drawing that most useful of weapons, the Roman sword, from the fire, I stuck it into the sides of the cave, and then standing upon it, gazed out upon the track we had traveled.

Nothing was to be seen but a flat surface of snow, pure white and unsullied as freshly washed linen.

I detected a strange noise, too, which was not the wind, but more like the slapping, flopping, stealing rush of water.

With some difficulty, I turned myself around, still standing on the iron hilt of the sword.

I looked up and saw a huge white ghost a mile high in the sky.

It glared angrily at me with an eye or mouth or both, emitting a red, blinding, awful flame.

I suppressed a shriek and fell senseless.

End of chapter three.

Section four of A Bunch of Keys, Where They Were Found and What They Might Have Unlocked, A Christmas Book, edited by Tom Hood.

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For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Zarina Silverman, Los Angeles, California.

The Bunch of Keys, The Ring, by T.W. Robertson, chapter four.

Concerning the ghost and how we went inside it.

When I recovered consciousness, it was daylight, and Bob was standing over me, stuffing snowballs in my mouth and scrubbing my temples.

That's right, Steve, said Bob.

I was frightened to death when I found I couldn't rouse you.

Have a bit of bread and a snowball.

It's all there is for breakfast.

It's left off snowing, and we've the day before us to find out where we are.

I took a crust and told Bob of the ghost.

What? cried Bob, his eyes and his mouth rounding like saucers.

A mile high? Or more, I continued, with red fire flashing from his eyes and a white cloak drawn over its head and shoulders.

Bob immediately divested himself of his Rolla's shirt and Turkish trousers.

I'll wear these things and paint my face no more, said he.

I think I have mentioned that he had his own clothes underneath his costume.

Now, Steve, give us a hoist and I'll reconnoiter.

Ghosts ain't allowed to come out by daylight, and if this one does and fires his flame at me, I'll say a prayer and defy the devil and all his works.

Bob, who had an invincible spirit, was soon out at the top of our cave, and he shouted, Steve! Aye.

I see the ghost! And he laughed.

Do you? Yes! It is a lighthouse.

A what? A lighthouse.

Don't you remember that picture we had in the Tales of the Sea? This one is exactly like it.

Come up.

Bob, who had been seated on the edge of the roof of our cave, rose to his feet and shouted, Steve! What?

What?We're at sea! I scrambled up, and Bob lifted me to my feet.

To the left I saw the monster that had so frightened me the night before.

It was, as he said, a lighthouse, the crown over its lantern capped with snow, and its sides white with the drift.

The wind took away my breath.

I looked forward, and I saw the ocean tossing and rolling towards us, a ship with a white sail in the distance.

I had never before seen the sea, and I fell.

Bob again applied his infallible snowball remedy, and brought me to.

I found that we were on a cliff.

On the rock opposite, detached from the mainland by a narrow stream, stood the lighthouse.

Had Bob not fallen into the gully in which we had passed the night, we should have walked to the extreme verge of the cliff, and, blinded by the snow, been precipitated into the boiling sea below.

No, Steve, said Bob.

We should have been saved by those who put the lighthouse there to mark the track.

No, Bob, we were saved by him who gave men mind and strength to build the lighthouse.

A voice was borne upon the wind, which roared out in tones of thunder, Oi! The figure of a man stood at the door of the lighthouse, smoking a pipe.

He motioned to us to descend the cliffs, and we immediately obeyed him.

He descended some steps cut in the rock, got into a boat, and pushed himself down the stream.

He was an elderly man, in a blue worsted shirt and yellow fustian trousers, made short in the legs, but uncommonly full behind.

Now, you pies, he said, who are you? We told him the whole truth, for the events of the past night had been a warning to us.

You're a couple of beauties, you are, said the man.

Young drunkuses, and your father and mother in a nice way about you.

We explained that we had no mother.

Well, your father, then.

I ought to know.

Jump in and I'll give you some breakfast.

You look half-starved.

Then you must write to your father.

If you don't, I'll give you up to the coastguard, and I'll lock you in the black hole.

We got into the boat, crossed the little river, and ascended the rocky steps into the lighthouse.

It was a strange place, that lighthouse, with little staircases at the sides and two round chambers, a living room and a room to sleep in, one above the other, and the light chamber above all.

The light was a revolving one.

All the furniture was very neat and stowed away in perfect order.

There were a great many brass hooks upon the wall, and everything looked as clean as if it had been just washed and stowed away, or as if it were on the point of going on a long journey, and space was a great consideration.

The man gave us some coffee and bread and a herring.

We fell to and ate heartily, though the wind was roaring and the sea lashing outside as if they wanted to get in at us.

I'm one of the lightkeepers, the man said.

My mate's married and out on a holiday to spend the Christmas with his wife.

I'm a widower, I am.

Been a widower these ten years, so I'm all alone here.

If I were your father, I should give you a taste of two-inch.

Bob and I buried our noses in our cups.

I know what it is to lose bairns.

I had a boy, just such a lad as you.

And he looked at Bob.

He was drowned in a smack eight years sin, and I only lost my little Patience last October.

I saw that he had a bit of black crepe round his arm, and I felt surprised that a man with trousers made so large behind could have so much feeling.

He seemed to like to talk.

I suppose that being so much alone, he was pleased with company.

I shall show you his gravestone, my boy's I mean, tomorrow when we go to church.

When we had finished breakfast, he made us wash up the cups, which I thought rather a liberty.

Then he turned Bob out and made me write to my father to say where we were and how sorry we felt.

Then he turned me out and made Bob read him the letter I had written.

We remained the whole of that day in the lighthouse and watched the cleaning and trimming of the lamp, and the next day, being a fair, bright, breezy Sunday, he took us to a squat little church built upon a high cliff with a Union Jack flying from its tower.

The congregation was composed of coastguardsmen and fishermen and sailors and their families, and all the men and even the women and the children looked very clean and red and salt and, as it were, stowed away like the furniture in the lighthouse.

Even the pulpit, which in my mind was always associated with the Reverend Dewhurst, was occupied by an old gentleman with a high square nose like a cliff and a pair of light blue eyes the color of seawater.

We, that is Bob and I, attracted considerable notice, and when the service was over the old clergyman inquired who we were, as indeed did all the congregation.

The lightkeeper showed us the grave of his wife and son and pointed to the inscription with his prayer book.

The names on the stone were Patience and John Samuel Strongitharm, and I read that the boy was drowned when he was aged fifteen.

Yes, fifteen, fifteen, said the lightkeeper, looking at Bob.

There seems somehow something right in a man as lost his son at sea, keeping a light to save so many vessels to and from the Norr, don't there? I looked round, but the man's eyes and thoughts were quick and followed me.

I ain't a-going to have no stone put up for my gal for the next ten months, he said.

I ventured to ask why not.

Tain't regular.

What did she die of, sir? Agey.

The doctor said it wasn't, but it was Agey.

The lightkeeper, Mr. Strongitharm, took us to dine with a friend of his at the station, a row of cottages with a flagstaff and vane before them, where the coastguardsmen, the officers who capture the bold smugglers of the ocean, are quartered, and which, like the church, was on top of a cliff.

It seemed to be considered the genteel thing to live upon the top of the cliff, in order, I suppose, to be near the wind.

The friend we dined with was, we were told, the first boatman, or chief boatman, I forget which, and he wore a gold anchor on his sleeve.

I had often read in plays of first officer, first lord, etc., and this man, Saunders by name, really was a first boatman, though he by no means realized my expectations.

Almost immediately after dinner, Mr. Strongitharm took us back to the lighthouse and set about his work, polishing and cleaning.

He then gave us some tea and made Bob and I alternately read chapters from the Bible.

'I always sit over my Bible of a Sunday night,' he said.

'My little Patience used to read it to me, and though I can't read it myself, being no scullard, I like to look over it.' I was about to speak when the old man took me up hastily.

'You're too quick, youngster, ever so much too quick.

Your quickness'll bring you into trouble.

I know what you're thinking on.

I could read the gravestone because I've been so often told what letters was cut on it.

I can't read print, though I sit over my Bible all the same.' Soon after this, he sent us to bed.

The next morning, when we looked from the landward window at the side of our chamber, we hardly knew where we were, but thought the lighthouse had drifted out to sea and been cast upon some unknown coast.

The snow had cleared away, and the tops of the cliffs and the country inland were of a bright green.

'Regular strong thaw,' remarked Mr. Strongitharm.

'The fish must be waiting to be catched after such a frost.

Can you boys net?' We replied that if he meant fish with a net, we were proficient in the sport, as it was a favorite one with us at home.

'Aye, aye.

I'll go with you to make the first cast.

Then I'll go down into the town.' Mr. Strongitharm always spoke of the town, a village containing a population of 60 souls, two shops, and about eight houses, as if it were a thronged metropolis.

'And bring you boys some soft tack.

Do you know what soft tack is?' he asked me.

'No.' 'Dearie me.

Such a fine scullard as you not to know that.

Why, I thought you had knowed everything.' We left the lighthouse together, Bob and I carrying the net.

After the first cast into a small freshwater stream, which was not very successful, Mr. Strongitharm said, 'Now you boys won't run away?' 'Oh, no, sir.' 'If you do, I'll set the coast guard after you for sure.

But you won't, will you? Honor?' 'Honor.'

Hey, it's Jemma Spig from The Psychology of Your 20s.

In a very special episode brought to you by Alliant University, I ask Dr. Sandra Espinosa, what does therapy actually do? From the science behind therapeutic change to how clinicians approach the work to why therapy can feel so difficult to access or even stigmatized in some families and communities, we pull back the curtain on the therapeutic process and explore what meaningful growth actually looks like.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest1:04:27

I didn't go to therapy until my mid-tw- late 20s, I think it was almost, and it was a career that I was pursuing and I was still nervous.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest1:04:36

I am a much better wife, daughter, friend, mom because I'm a therapist.

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Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest1:04:46

We want to hear your story.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest1:04:47

I tell my, my clients, "You are the expert in your story and I am going to be a witness to that."

You can listen to this full episode of The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Ashley Iaconetti from the Almost Famous podcast.

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Then mind you catch a good lot, and we'll send some to Mrs. Sanders.

I shan't be more than two hours gone.

Left to ourselves, we threw our net and splashed with the pole to very little purpose.

We only caught a few small roach and dace.

We went higher up the stream, but with no better luck, and so more than an hour passed and we thought of giving it up.

One more throw, suggested Bob, and we threw in the net again.

As we were hauling it in, I saw something on the opposite bank that so shook my nerves that my foot slipped and I fell into the water.

I saw the old man whom we had seen standing at the gate of the large farmhouse with stone posts and chains before it.

He was without his hat and had no handkerchief and was talking loudly to himself and gesticulating violently.

The expression of his eyes was horribly wild.

He did not see us.

We watched him run by the side of the bank and leap a ditch with great agility.

Then he turned round and looked at the water and swore awfully and then ran on again and so out of sight.

All this time I was up to my waist in the water.

Bob soon had me out and I stood shivering with cold.

Bob offered to change trousers with me but I would not accept his kindness.

Let's take the net in, said Bob, and by that time perhaps Mr. Strongthumb will be back.

We found that we had caught six or seven small perch and one large bream.

Not worth the trouble, I remarked.

Steve, said Bob.

Yes? There is something else.

In the net? Yes.

What? A bunch of keys.

I looked down and saw that a bunch of keys had somehow or other got into the net and entangled itself in its meshes by means of the wards of the keys.

It was not at all an extraordinary bunch of keys.

There was a large ring with four keys hung upon it and there was a smaller ring with three small keys fastened on it.

The small ring was attached to the larger or outer ring but the three small keys upon the smaller ring had no connection with the large keys on the large ring.

Well, byes, what spart? said the voice of Mr.

Strongthumb.

We showed him what we had caught and he puzzled over the bunch of keys and looked at them with his broad brown hand shading his eyes as if they were distant objects, say fishing boats in the offing.

They're quite bright, I remarked.

They can't have been long in the water.

Howsoever you must be getting into bed, youngster.

You'll always be in trouble, you will.

You're so sharp, so trudge homeward.

When we had gained the lighthouse, Mr. Strongthumb ordered me into his own bed in the upper chamber and gave me a glass of hot rum and water with a large piece of salt butter, the salt sort of butter that could be churned from the milk of sea cows.

I told him of the old man we had seen and where we found him on the night that we were lost.

Ah, said Mr. Strongthumb, that was old Tilson.

He's mad.

He was drove so by racehorses and drink.

He used to breed racehorses.

When they used to win, he used to drink to drown himself for joy.

When they used to lose, he used to drink to drown himself for aggravation.

He's a bad old lot.

He used to thrash his grooms when he was savage, and after his wife, she was a real lady, a real gentleman's daughter, ran away from him.

He beat a stable boy that cruel that he killed him, and old Tilson was tried for it at the sizes.

I wonder if the old rascal threw the keys into the stream.

This set me thinking.

Had old Tilson thrown away the keys after committing a murder? I looked for a bloodstain on the bunch, but there was none.

Was he tried for murder? I inquired.

Manslaughter.

Counselor Spadrell got him off.

Give me the keys.

If anything turns up about them, they'll be found here.

He hung them on to the end of a rope coiled round a hook immediately opposite the bed.

Now you go to sleep, said Mr. Strongetharm.

Your brother must not sleep with you, for if you catch the ague, he might catch it too.

We must make shift with him below.

So turn to the wall and have a cock.

So good.

No, not good night.

Good day.

And the bunch of keys? I began.

Never mind them.

Perhaps they're the keys as opens Davy Jones's locker.

Or perhaps they're the keys as locks up little boy's mouth.

So go to sleep and don't think no more on them.

But I could not help thinking more of them, though I went to sleep immediately.

I awoke in two or three hours.

It was night, and something before my eyes shone white like silver.

It was the bunch of keys.

There they hung on the end of the rope, bathed in the moonlight, which streamed in from the little window at the side of the chamber.

They seemed to glare at me with an intense brilliance, as if the inside of their handles were eyes and saw me.

Then again, they looked like fish in the dark, bright, molten, and scaly.

Then they were murderers hanging at Newgate.

They quite frightened me.

Perhaps it was the effect of my romantic and fervid temperament.

Perhaps it was the rum and water.

I fixed my eyes upon them till they seemed to illuminate the wall.

They fascinated me.

The wind seemed to be whistling through them.

I thought of Bluebeard, Fatima, the Baron Trenwick, and the Castle of Otranto.

I didn't know how long I lay looking at them, but what with the wind outside, the feeling that I was both at sea and on land, that I was sleeping in the middle of a long chimney, with water where the fireplace should be and flames at the top, that I was fixed in a burning lantern like the man in the moon, at last I began to fancy that the keys were alive, and walked, and talked, and had thoughts and feelings as I had, that they made love and promised things, and broke their promises, and were asked and given in marriage, fought duels, went to law, quarreled with each other, and made it up again, loaded guns, and went out fishing, and so on, and so on, till I suppose I fell asleep, and dreamt dreams, something like the stories that here follow.

End of chapter 4

4Section five of A Bunch of Keys: Where They Were Found and What They Might Have Unlocked, A Christmas Book, edited by Tom Hood.

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The Key of the Piano, Part One, by T. Archer.

Franz Wilhelm and myself were schoolfellows and fast friends when we were both boys learning our lessons with old Father Schmidt at Heidelberg.

Had we become Bruchan at the university, I should have called him Drutz Buddha, for he was dearer to me than were my own kindred, than my elder brother at Frankfurt who, when my mother died, sent me to be brought up by my father's sister, or than my third half-cousin Anna whom he married, and who, such is destiny, disliked my remaining in the house lest people should imagine that I was her child, she being of greater age than Karl and accustomed to the well-ruling of her household.

My father's sister, who in much kindness undertook me, was a spinster, and in the uphill street of the town kept a little shop for the sale of spectacles and woodcarvings to the English and other visitors, so that she was of some consideration and lived so quietly that, but for her intimacy with the wife of Master Schwartz, foreman at the leather factory, musician and mender of organs, I should have known no companions at home.

Master Schwartz and his wife were quiet folks, with only one daughter, little Mina, who, when I first saw her, looked so pretty in her red skirt and tiny white cap that I felt at the moment a love-inspiring admiration which, had it not been that I myself was but an infant, would have thrust a fatal barrier between Franz and me.

Franz, however, had not then arrived, but came soon afterwards in charge of an old nurse, who, having cared for him from the time of his birth, and being now on her way to end her days with her relatives at Mannheim, was commissioned to leave him thenceforth with Madam Schwartz, who had been own servant companion to his grandmother.

For the mother of Franz was daughter of a Herr Sub-Deputy, but who was her husband, or whether she had been married, nobody knew if Madam Schwartz did not, and she certainly never mentioned it to her dying day.

The poor mother was now dead, and the wife of the Sub-Deputy also, and it was at the instance of the Sub-Deputy himself that the little fellow, who had a small annual sum settled on him, was confided to Master Schwartz and became foster brother to Mina.

The curious thing was that as these two children grew, there was a strong resemblance between them, so that they might have passed for brother and sister by blood, rather than by that affinity of mind growth which, as some have said, will control the features of the face into outward likeness by the force of inward sympathy.

However this may be, they were the same in the color of hair and eye, which in both were dark, and in that long visage and more prominent featuring that belonged scarcely to the German type most common, and of which I myself am an example.

It was perhaps the contrast between us which drew Franz and me into close fellowship, for it is by contrasts that we are attracted, and by the hope of finding in the mind and temper of another that which is wanting in our own, our earliest affections are made lasting.

My first child liking for Mina was transferred thereafter to Franz, and he became my brother as she became his sister.

So when he was to study music, I also entreated of my brother Karl through a letter that I might be a musician, and had indeed already learned of one of the band who played in the gardens on the hill to blow the instrument of which I am now a professor.

They were quiet, happy days when we used to go up to those gardens after school and sit under the trees looking down upon the broad silver band of the Necker flowing through the light green fields, all under there from the donkey boys and the beggars to the Welschmunden, or the wooded hill where the yoked oxen toiled up the steep, and the great dogs of the farmers followed the team, themselves looking like the wolves which are there no longer.

This quiet life of study and friendship was soon to end, or rather to change, as must all the events of this mortal life.

For Franz was grown into a youth, and Mina had budded into a grave, sweet, dark-eyed maiden, still with that wonderful resemblance to her foster brother, which, though not always apparent, made itself known by a sudden turn of expression, a moment's glance of the eye, or a quick movement of the head.

Franz was, as I have said, dark and with deep brown clustering hair.

In his shape, too, he was small and delicate, unlike me who then began to grow of the figure that belongs to many of our nation, and with the fair face and yellow hair that might be seen any day amongst the Bruchen at the Hirschgasse.

In mental as well as physical qualities did Franz differ from many of our countrymen, since he lacked that calm which is sometimes mistaken for stolidity by those who do not understand composure and a quiet self-destination that accepts all things as of course.

It is the want of this which renders your English manners restless and easy and affected, for the Englishman is ever haunted by the fear of being ridiculous, and in terror of seeming foolish is seldom either wise or dignified in outward bearing, while we Germans are either too self-satisfied or too self-oblivious to be conscious of what to others may seem to be absurdity in our common actions, and gravely commit with simplicity little acts of personal folly to be detected in which an Englishman would redden and almost die for shame in consequence of his exaggerated self-importance.

Something of this was, I fear, in the nature of Franz, who was ever sensitive to anything affecting his individuality, and united to this was the kind of ability which he exhibited in acquiring any sort of knowledge up to the point of display and then leaving it for some fresh theme.

I have said that he had genius, however, which gift was not to me awarded at my birth, though I succeeded by application in attaining many things, and at length in becoming a professor of the art which I adopted.

Genius, however, will go far in music, and especially with the piano, which was the instrument to which my friend devoted himself, first under the instruction of Master Schwartz, and afterwards at the Conservatoire at Ghent, to which he had an introduction.

I must say in the all truthfulness which I desire to preserve that Franz was not a great musician, no, nor even a great player, but to him belonged a fascination which made what he did original, lifelike, inspired, and to this soul brilliancy he owed his success, and the name which he was acquiring as a master of harmony when the events happened which I am now to relate.

As I have said, I applied to my brother Karl for permission to adopt music as a profession, and he consented that I should commence to study at the same time as Franz.

But in a year after that he came himself to Heidelberg, and proposed that I should go back with him to Frankfurt, where I might lodge near him and pursue my education under professor in that town until I was able to undertake engagements for my self-support.

This I was willing to accomplish, though not without many tears and embraces could I bring myself to part with my good aunt, and especially with my brother and sister, Franz and Mina, to whom, alas, a great calamity was soon to happen in the death of Master Schwartz, who, falling from a high ladder at the leather factory, was so injured that he survived but five months.

This compelled Madame and Mina to let their house and betake themselves to Ghent, where a relative of the family, an assistant secretary in the town council house, had a brother, the owner of a large hotel, where Madame and her daughter would be welcome.

They were received as housekeeper manageresses, the owner being widowed of a young wife not nine months before.

At Ghent also went Franz with them, for at Ghent he could pursue his study of music, and with his small annuity, which still continued to be paid, could live at the hotel until such time as he obtained pupils when he should be old enough, or procured an engagement to control the piano at some assembly concert room.

Arrived at Frankfurt, I lived in an atmosphere of music for some time.

Otherwise my existence would have been sufficiently monotonous, for my brother's wife seldom asked me to her house when she entertained her acquaintances, and though I had made companions of two or three of my fellow students, I was too poor to invite them often to my room, and they in truth were generally too gay for me to hope to keep up with them in expenses.

None of these took the place in my regard which had always been held by Franz.

And the holidays of the year to which I looked forward with most heartfulness were the visits that every winter I paid to my dear brother and sister, and that which in the summer Franz managed to pay to me.

It was on one of these occasions, when we had both begun to earn our own living by our art, that he proposed to go to London, where he had, he said, some expectation of obtaining a handsome engagement at a series of concerts, the agent for which had visited him in Ghent, and where he also believed that I could obtain better employment.

It ended in our making the journey together and in our being employed in the same orchestra, he as an accompanist with an occasional solo, I as one of the ordinary band.

In London so many opportunities open themselves that those who are proficient in their art find the means of ready occupation, and to both of us fresh engagements for performance in public and for teaching were soon presented.

Franz, as I have said before, possessed a genius to which I could lay no claim, and quickly he passed beyond me and became famous, not only as a pianist, but also as a teacher whose connection was growing daily the more extensive and high-placed.

His absence grieved me not, since it caused no diminution of our friendship, but the rather, as I thought, caused my brother to rely on my true feeling and sympathy when he told me of his successes with the simplicity of the old days when we were boys at Heidelberg sitting in the hill garden.

One anxiety was mine, and it arose from my perception of the truth that Franz loved not his art so much for its own sake as for the fame and distinction which it might be made to bring him.

He seemed to me unaccountably to look beyond it to something further, the real nature of which I could not then determine, but which I afterwards learned was the delusion of his life.

Those best acquainted with the members of the musical profession who are much occupied in teaching will know how often they are received with confidence in well-placed and even distinguished families, and how it becomes almost a matter unavoidable that they are on terms familiar with the daughters of the houses where they teach.

It is to me sorrowful to know that there are some who abuse this confidence, and through the opportunity afforded them of unrestricted companionship under the softening influence of music, use the intimate relation of teacher and pupil to mislead the young girls by false flattery and foolish coquetting into sentiments which sometimes end in dishonorable passion.

This is detestable, but it may be remembered, too, that there are among the young and well-born ladies of this cold and conventional England some who secretly will escape from the restraint demanded by the society, and who, either unconscious of their own power or always vain of the influence wrought by their beauty and familiar disdainful concessions, lure their admirers to the madness of believing themselves favored, and then turn haughtily away with pretended surprise.

I would have staked my life upon the honor of Franz Wilhelm, and though we were now much separated and lived in different quarters of the town, he near his fashionable pupils at the West End of London, and I in a more modest lodging in the suburb, we met frequently and with the same simple confidence as ever.

Nevertheless, I was struck with an indefinable feeling of dismay when one evening he came into my room flushed and excited, and after we had smoked a cigar together, took from his breast a case containing the portrait of a lady.

It was a beautiful face, but with nothing in it of softness, a dark, haughty, aristocratic face, with a smile upon its lips such as I love not to see, and with a cruel downward look of the eyes shining beneath drooping lids.

Despite my forebodings, I affected to banter with him and said, Who hast thou here, brother? Is it a prima donna who has taken thee captive with her singing and Semiramis? Or art thou bringing forth a pupil to the profession who looks thus on the orchestra and keeps her tender glances for thee? But he stayed me with a gesture almost fierce, so hasty was it, and showed me within the case at the back of the picture a little scented pink three-cornered note which he opened and placed in my hand.

It had evidently accompanied the portrait and was written in such words as women learn to write too early, words which seem to mean much and might mean nothing.

To Franz they might bear heaven knows what of feverish hope and ambition's unrest.

To me they were an index to the face that I had just looked upon, the heartless amusement of a haughty woman who played with the love she laughed at.

For some time I could learn but little and sat looking painfully at my friend whose health always had been delicate.

To me it seemed affected either by long professional work or by some deep anxiety.

His flushed face grew paler, and as he placed his hand upon my arm I could feel it tremble, I could see how white and thin it had grown.

He was being consumed by some restless fever which would soon, if it had not already, become a serious disease.

When he at last came to speak of the writer of the note, the original of the portrait, I learned that she was one of his pupils, the daughter of a wealthy English Mr.

Sir, whose title had been bestowed upon him in consequence of his great affairs in the city and who had married the daughter of a lord.

Franz swore to me that when he gave the first lesson on the piano to this proud and handsome miss, he felt a sort of terror, a presage of what must come to him in love for her, and that he set his mind to keep himself from trespass in look or word.

But she, whose character was that of haughty contempt to her attendants and of cold indifference to many of the guests who came there to visit, continually regarded him with meaning glances and glad smiles.

Often she made the lesson longer and prevailed on him to stay, and by a hundred tokens led him on to believe that she held him in her favor.

Not in these terms did he to me relate the course she had pursued, for he still cherished deep down in his heart the faith that she loved him too much to regard the cold rules of the world, and lest he should fear to declare himself, had given him hope and courage.

Not yet had he spoken to her of love, except by allusion and by all those smallest familiarities which she permitted, and which none but lovers or dear friends exercise.

He had kissed her hand, had composed and written love songs for her to play, had played them to her with her round white arm leaning on his shoulder as he sat at the piano.

And now, in answer to a request so full of meaning that he feared it had sealed his fate, I was doubtful of its boldness.

She had sent the picture and the letter that I saw.

But you yourself shall see her, Emile, he cried as I endeavored to reason with him prudently.

That haughty expression is not meant for me.

To my appeal it answered with a smile as soft and gracious as that of the angel in the old picture at Ghent, which we have stood so many times to look at together.

Tis useless to speak to me of prudence now.

Prudence is vanquished by love.

Let me tell you, dear friend, I am making money.

I could afford to marry even if she were poor.

Heaven, how I wish she had not been born rich.

And yet no, for then we should never have met.

I broke through this rhapsody by inquiring when he intended to go to fulfill his engagements at Ghent, where he had undertaken to direct some concerts.

Ah, that is it, he replied sadly.

I go in three days from Tuesday, and it is now Sunday.

But before I leave England,

Hey, it's Gemma Spake from The Psychology of Your 20s.

In a very special episode brought to you by Alliant University, I ask Dr. Sandra Espinosa, what does therapy actually do? From the science behind therapeutic change to how clinicians approach the work to why therapy can feel so difficult to access or even stigmatized in some families and communities, we pull back the curtain on the therapeutic process and explore what meaningful growth actually looks like.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest1:35:25

I didn't go to therapy until my mid, late 20s, I think it was almost.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest1:35:29

And it was a career that I was pursuing and I was still nervous.

Dr. Sandra EspinosaGuest1:35:33

I am a much better wife, daughter, friend, mom, because I'm a therapist.