The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1883-12-29 00:00:00

PETER SAESER AND HIS CLARIONET.

There are few scenes in literature touched with a
more sympathetic humour than that in which Albert
Bitzius, the Swiss novelist, describes the entry of the
young man upon his first school, furnished with
a borrowed bed, a chest, a coffee-pot, some wooden
spoons, and a saucepan, wherewith to begin life,
crowned by the magnificent salary of £7 10s. a year;
or which lay bare to us in masterly succession, whom
even sorrow can hardly dignify. Before he gets a wife
to protect him a little against the malicious world, the
poor schoolmaster is alternately the prey of his class
and of his own innocence and follies. There is to one
so easy or so amusing to cheat as Peter.
"One winter's day an individual with a clarionet
suddenly made his appearance in my room, and began
to explain to me how delightful it would he for me to
be able to amuse myself in the evening with such an
instrument, and, above all, how usefnl it would he to
me for my class-singing. In a twinkling I should be
perfectly master of it, and he pledged himself to teach
me how to do it. Thereupon he began to praise up the
instrument, telling me that it had belonged to a very
rich gentleman. After which he played me an air, hut
in such a manner that a mouse scuttling away in terror
upset my inkstand. However, I listened with ravish-
ment, and the more the noise pierced to my very bones
and marrow the more pleasure it gave me, I thought
of the ears I should enchant, the hearts I should
move, the astonishment I should provoke. I took the
marvellous thing in my band with a violent beating of
the heart; I let him put my fingers on the holes, and
began to blow with all my strength, so that my mater
at once declared me to be endowed with quite excep-
tional gifts I knew neither peace nor rest till
I had learned a valse and a song by Gell,rt. Then
with what joy I said for the first time in school with a
mysterious air, "Now then, we will try something
new!" A child brought me the instrument, from
which first of all I took my note, then beginnirg with
the voice I followed it up by blowing and fingering,
shaking my head and body, and beating time vigorously
with my foot. Every now end then, quite out of
breath, I would sing a note or two; then begin to
blow again, turning now to the right and now to the
left, and putting the end of the instrument to the ear
of anybody who did not seem to understand what was
going on, The children shone with happiness, and
shouted with such force that their eyes almost dropped
out of their heads—so determined were they to scream
as loud as my clarionet ; but I did not let myself be
distanced, so that when we had done it seemed as if
the walla tottered, and none of us knew whether he
was standing on his head or his heels."

A neighbour begged the eager musician not to praa-
tise too late at night lest it should stir his cook to
rivalry, and so wake the hom,ehold too early. "For
the love of peace and repose," says Peter magnifi•
cently, "I granted his prayer, thinking it strange,
however, that a mere cook should thus give the law to
a schoolmaster."—Atacmillan's Magazine.