There is one good thing about Sue, if she is a girl: she is real
charitable, and is all the time getting people to give money to
missionaries and things. She collected mornahundred dollars from ever so
many people last year, and sent it to a society, and her name was in all
the papers as "Miss Susan Brown," the young lady that gave a hundred
dollars to a noble cause and may others go and do likewise.
About a month ago she began to get up a concert for a noble object. I
forget what the object was, for Sue didn't make up her mind about it
until a day or two before the concert; but whatever it was, it didn't
get much money.
Sue was to sing in the concert, and Mr. Travers was to sing, and father
was to read something, and the Sunday-school was to sing, and the brass
band was to play lots of things. Mr. Travers was real good about it, and
attended to engaging the brass band, and getting the tickets printed.
We've got a first-rate band. You just ought to hear it once. I'm going
to join it some day, and play on the drum; that is, if they don't find
out about the mistake I made with the music.
When Mr. Travers went to see the leader of the band to settle what music
was to be played at the concert he let me go with him. The man was
awfully polite, and he showed Mr. Travers great stacks of music for him
to select from. After a while he proposed to go and see a man somewheres
who played in the band, and they left me to wait until they came back.
I had nothing to do, so I looked at the music. The notes were all made
with a pen and ink, and pretty bad they were. I should have been ashamed
if I had made them. Just to prove that I could have done it better than
the man who did do it, I took a pen and ink and tried it. I made
beautiful notes, and as a great many of the pieces of music weren't half
full of notes, I just filled in the places where there weren't any
notes. I don't know how long Mr. Travers and the leader of the band were
gone, but I was so busy that I did not miss them, and when I heard them
coming I sat up as quiet as possible, and never said anything about what
I had done, because we never should praise ourselves or seem to be proud
of our own work.
Now I solemnly say that I never meant to do any harm. All I meant to do
was to improve the music that the man who wrote it had been too lazy to
finish. Why, in some of those pieces of music there were places three or
four inches long without a single note, and you can't tell me that was
right. But I sometimes think there is no use in trying to help people as
I tried to help our brass band. People are never grateful, and they
always manage to blame a boy, no matter how good he is. I shall try,
however, not to give way to these feelings, but to keep on doing right
no matter what happens.
The next night we had the concert, or at any rate we tried to have it.
The Town-hall was full of people, and Sue said it did seem hard that so
much money as the people had paid to come to the concert should all have
to go to charity when she really needed a new seal-skin coat. The
performance was to begin with a song by Sue, and the band was to play
just like a piano while she was singing. The song was all about being so
weary and longing so hard to die, and Sue was singing it like anything,
when all of a sudden the man with the big drum hit it a most awful bang,
and nearly frightened everybody to death.
People laughed out loud, and Sue could hardly go on with her song. But
she took a fresh start, and got along pretty well till the big drum
broke out again, and the man hammered away at it till the leader went
and took his drum-stick away from him. The people just howled and
yelled, and Sue burst out crying and went right off the stage and
longed to die in real earnest.
[Illustration: THERE WAS THE AWFULLEST FIGHT YOU EVER SAW.]
When things got a little bit quiet, and the man who played the drum had
made it up with the leader, the band began to play something on its own
account. It began all right, but it didn't finish the way it was meant
to finish. First one player and then another would blow a loud note in
the wrong place, and the leader would hammer on his music-stand, and the
people would laugh themselves 'most sick. After a while the band came to
a place where the trombones seemed to get crazy, and the leader just
jumped up and knocked the trombone-player down with a big horn that he
snatched from another man. Then somebody hit the leader with a cornet
and knocked him into the big drum, and there was the awfullest fight you
ever saw till somebody turned out the gas.
There wasn't any more concert that night, and the people all got their
money back, and now Mr. Travers and the leader of the band have offered
a reward for "the person who maliciously altered the music"--that's what
the notice says. But I wasn't malicious, and I do hope nobody will find
out I did it, though I mean to tell father about it as soon as he gets
over having his nose pretty near broke by trying to interfere between
the trombone-player and the man with the French horn.