he was generally put under the teacher's desk for punishment. It was
a dark close, sultry spot, but when he was well seated, and had grown
tired of looking at the triangle of black elastic in the teacher's
"congress" shoe, and tired of wishing it was his instead of hers, he
would tie one end of a bit of thread to the button of his gingham
shirt, and, carrying it round his left ear several times, make
believe he was Paganini languishing in prison and playing on a violin
with a single string.

As he grew older there was no marked improvement, and Tony Croft was
by general assent counted the laziest boy in the village. That he
was lazy in certain matters merely because he was in a frenzy of
industry to pursue certain others had nothing to do with the case, of
course.

If any one had ever given him a task in which he could have seen
cause working to effect, in which he could have found by personal
experiment a single fact that belonged to him, his own by divine
right of discovery, he would have counted labour or study all joy.

He was one incarnate Why and How; one brooding wonder and
interrogation point. "Why does the sun drive away the stars? Why do
the leaves turn red and gold? What makes the seed swell in the
earth? From whence comes the life hidden in the egg under the bird's
breast? What holds the moon in the sky? Who regulates her shining?
Who moves the wind? Who made me, and what am I? Who, why, how,
whither? If I came from God but only lately, teach me his lessons
first, put me into vital relation with life and law, and then give me
your dead signs and equivalents for real things, that I may learn
more and more, and ever more and ever more." These were the