Nosing around in an old box--packed away, and lost to memory for
years--an hour ago I found a musty package of gilt paper, or rather, a
roll it was, with the green-tarnished gold of the old sheet for the
outer wrapper. I picked it up mechanically to toss it into some
obscure corner, when, carelessly lifting it by one end, a child's tin
whistle dropped therefrom and fell tinkling on the attic floor. It
lies before me on my writing table now--and so, too, does the roll
entire, though now a roll no longer,--for my eager fingers have
unrolled the gilded covering, and all its precious contents are spread
out beneath my hungry eyes.

Here is a scroll of ink-written music. I don't read music, but I know
the dash and swing of the pen that rained it on the page. Here is a
letter, with the self-same impulse and abandon in every syllable; and
its melody--however sweet the other--is far more sweet to me. And here
are other letters like it--three--five--and seven, at least. Bob wrote
them from the front, and Billy kept them for me when I went to join
him. Dear boy! Dear boy!

Here are some cards of bristol-board. Ah! when Bob came to these there
were no blotches then. What faces--what expressions! The droll,
ridiculous, good-for-nothing genius, with his "sad mouth," as he
called it, "upside down," laughing always--at everything, at big
rallies, and mass-meetings and conventions, county fairs, and floral
halls, booths, watermelon-wagons, dancing-tents, the swing,
Daguerrean-car, the "lung-barometer," and the air-gun man. Oh! what a
gifted, good-for-nothing boy Bob was in those old days! And here 's a
picture of a girlish face--a very faded photograph--even fresh from
"the gallery," five and twenty years ago it was a faded thing. But the
living face--how bright and clear that was!--for "Doc," Bob's awful
name for her, was a pretty girl, and brilliant, clever, lovable every
way. No wonder Bob fancied her! And you could see some hint of her
jaunty loveliness in every fairy face he drew, and you could find her
happy ways and dainty tastes unconsciously assumed in all he did--the
books he read--the poems he admired, and those he wrote; and, ringing
clear and pure and jubilant, the vibrant beauty of her voice could
clearly be defined and traced through all his music. Now, there's the
happy pair of them--Bob and Doc. Make of them just whatever your good
fancy may dictate, but keep in mind the stern, relentless ways of
destiny.

You are not at the beginning of a novel, only at the threshold of one
of a hundred experiences that lie buried in the past, and this
particular one most happily resurrected by these odds and ends found
in the gilded roll.

You see, dating away back, the contents of this package, mainly, were
hastily gathered together after a week's visit out at the old Mills
farm; the gilt paper, and the whistle, and the pictures, they were
Billy's; the music pages, Bob's, or Doc's; the letters and some other
manuscripts were mine.

The Mills girls were great friends of Doc's, and often came to visit
her in town; and so Doc often visited the Mills's. This is the way
that Bob first got out there, and won them all, and "shaped the thing"
for me, as he would put it; and lastly, we had lugged in Billy,--such
a handy boy, you know, to hold the horses on picnic excursions, and to
watch the carriage and the luncheon, and all that.--"Yes, and," Bob
would say, "such a serviceable boy in getting all the fishing tackle
in proper order, and digging bait, and promenading in our wake up and
down the creek all day, with the minnow-bucket hanging on his arm,
don't you know!"

But jolly as the days were, I think jollier were the long evenings at
the farm. After the supper in the grove, where, when the weather
permitted, always stood the table, ankle-deep in the cool green plush
of the sward; and after the lounge upon the grass, and the cigars, and
the new fish stories, and the general invoice of the old ones, it was
delectable to get back to the girls again, and in the old "best room"
hear once more the lilt of the old songs and the stacattoed laughter
of the piano mingling with the alto and falsetto voices of the Mills
girls, and the gallant soprano of the dear girl Doc.

This is the scene I want you to look in upon, as, in fancy, I do
now--and here are the materials for it all, husked from the gilded
roll:

Bob, the master, leans at the piano now, and Doc is at the keys, her
glad face often thrown up sidewise toward his own. His face is
boyish--for there is yet but the ghost of a mustache upon his lip. His
eyes are dark and clear, of over-size when looking at you, but now
their lids are drooped above his violin, whose melody has, for the
time, almost smoothed away the upward kinkings of the corners of his
mouth. And wonderfully quiet now is every one, and the chords of the
piano, too, are low and faltering; and so, at last, the tune itself
swoons into the universal hush, and--Bob is rasping, in its stead, the
ridiculous, but marvelously perfect imitation of the "priming" of a
pump, while Billy's hands forget the "chiggers" on the bare backs of
his feet, as, with clapping palms, he dances round the room in
ungovernable spasms of delight. And then we all laugh; and Billy,
taking advantage of the general tumult, pulls Bob's head down and
whispers, "Git 'em to stay up 'way late to-night!" And Bob, perhaps
remembering that we go back home to-morrow, winks at the little fellow
and whispers, "You let me manage 'em! Stay up till broad daylight if
we take a notion--eh?" And Billy dances off again in newer glee, while
the inspired musician is plunking a banjo imitation on his enchanted
instrument, which is unceremoniously drowned out by a circus-tune from
Doc that is absolutely inspiring to everyone but the barefooted
brother, who drops back listlessly to his old position on the floor
and sullenly renews operations on his "chigger" claims.

"Thought you was goin' to have pop-corn to-night all so fast!" he
says, doggedly, in the midst of a momentary lull that has fallen on a
game of whist. And then the oldest Mills girl, who thinks cards stupid
anyhow, says: "That's so, Billy; and we're going to have it, too; and
right away, for this game's just ending, and I shan't submit to being
bored with another. I say 'pop-corn' with Billy! And after that," she
continues, rising and addressing the party in general, "we must have
another literary and artistic tournament, and that's been in
contemplation and preparation long enough; so you gentlemen can be
pulling your wits together for the exercises, while us girls see to
the refreshments."

"Have you done anything toward it!" queries Bob, when the girls are
gone, with the alert Billy in their wake.

"Just an outline," I reply. "How with you?"

"Clean forgot it--that is, the preparation; but I've got a little old
second-hand idea, if you'll all help me out with it, that'll amuse us
some, and tickle Billy I'm certain."

So that's agreed upon; and while Bob produces his portfolio, drawing
paper, pencils and so on, I turn to my note-book in a dazed way and
begin counting my fingers in a depth of profound abstraction, from
which I am barely aroused by the reappearance of the girls and Billy.

"Goody, goody, goody! Bob's goin' to make pictures!" cries Billy, in
additional transport to that the cake pop-corn has produced.

"Now, you girls," says Bob, gently detaching the affectionate Billy
from one leg and moving a chair to the table, with a backward glance
of intelligence toward the boy,--"you girls are to help us all you
can, and we can all work; but, as I'll have all the illustrations to
do, I want you to do as many of the verses as you can--that'll be
easy, you know,--because the work entire is just to consist of a
series of fool-epigrams, such as, for instance.--Listen, Billy:

Here lies a young man
Who in childhood began
To swear, and to smoke, and to drink,--
In his twentieth year
He quit swearing and beer,
And yet is still smoking, I think."

And the rest of his instructions are delivered in lower tones, that
the boy may not hear; and then, all matters seemingly arranged, he
turns to the boy with--"And now, Billy, no lookin' over shoulders, you
know, or swinging on my chair-back while I'm at work. When the
pictures are all finished, then you can take a squint at 'em, and not
before. Is that all hunky, now?"

"Oh! who's a-goin' to look over your shoulder--only Doc." And as the
radiant Doc hastily quits that very post, and dives for the offending
brother, he scrambles under the piano and laughs derisively.

And then a silence falls upon the group--a gracious quiet, only
intruded upon by the very juicy and exuberant munching of an apple
from a remote fastness of the room, and the occasional thumping of a
bare heel against the floor.

At last I close my note-book with a half slam.

"That means," says Bob, laying down his pencil, and addressing the
girls,--"That means he's concluded his poem, and that he's not pleased
with it in any manner, and that he intends declining to read it, for
that self-acknowledged reason, and that he expects us to believe every
affected word of his entire speech--"

"Oh, don't!" I exclaim.

"Then give us the wretched production, in all its hideous deformity!"

And the girls all laugh so sympathetically, and Bob joins them so
gently, and yet with a tone, I know, that can be changed so quickly to
my further discomfiture, that I arise at once and read, without
apology or excuse, this primitive and very callow poem recovered here
to-day from the gilded roll: