Milford chronicle., 1883-08-17
THE GUITAR PERIOD.
AN EPISODE IN THE TENDER LIFE OF
EVERY YOUNG MAN.
The First Guitar and the Sensation it Gre
ates in the Household.
From the Milwaukee SUM-

when he is taken with the fever to learn
to play the guitar. The fever comes on
about the time that he first falls in love,
and that is at the age of fourteen OF
fifteen. He may think he is in love
at twelve years of age, but that is only
a symptom. At fourteen he is in love
to such an extent that it actually makes
him tired to carry it around. He has
been reading novels in which there is
always a Spaniard or an italian lover,
dressed in fantastic costume, who takes a
guitar and goes to serenade the girl
in the novel, and she comes to the win
dow and throws kiss at the lover, and
then comes down herself, and they lally-
gag on the grass and talk foreign love
and catch cold, and the boy thinks that
is about the finest scheme that he ever
read of, and he decides to obtain a
guitar. It is some days before he can
muster up courage enough to speak to
his mother about buying a guitar, and
he wouldn't dare to speak to his father
about it. His mother has noticed that
he has not seemed we'll lately, and as
she has watched him moping around
and sighing, she has felt that he is hay
ing his young life sapped away by study,
or that worms are feeding on his damask
stomach. The old man, who has been
there, knows that the kid is in love, and
his recipe would be wedding onions, or
carrying in coal, but the good mothers
tender heart is touched, and she con-
sents to the guitar scheme, and shortly
afterward there is a weird, ghostly sound
coming from the attic that is a cross be-
tween the eolian music of a breeze sigh
ing through a wire window screen, and
couple of cats tuning up for a goose
berry bush symphony in E-hat, with
boot-jack bouquets.
The boy thumbs the strings of the
guitar in silence, when his father is not
around, and dreams of the time when
he can play an accompaniment to love
song, and put on a velvet jacket,
trimmed with gold lace, a wide SOM
brero, and go to the house Of his girl
and warble through the black NOUS
tache which he is sure will soon put in an
appearance on his lip. Oh, how he suf-
fers, as he thumbs the strings and fails
to detect the first principles Of tune,
but how patiently he works. He keeps
it up until he wears the skin off his fin
gers, about which time he is surprised
by his father, who follows up the strange,
weird sound, and takes the boy by the
neck, and in two minutes shakes the
love all out of him and sets him at work
moving away hay in the barn. There
is no one thing that will take the incip- |
lent fourteen year old love out of a boy
ike moving away hay in barn. He
ioes not have time to dream of the |
5paniard with the guitar, and the beau
tiful girl at the easement dressed in
lowing robes, and her hair gathered in
a blue ribbon. He has to pitch hay or
1e covered up, and so he pitches hay. |
The guitar period is one of the most
critical periods in the life of a boy. If
le succeeds in learning to play tune,
md his voice becomes trained to such
IN extent that he can sing without being
frightened at the noise, then he is gone.
From that out he becomes a dude,
whose sole ambition is to be called upon
o sing, and he will try to look sweet,
md viii sing love songs at private par
les, with his hand in his bosom, and
hink the ladies all yearn for him, when
hey feel as though they would like to
AXE him across their knees, and caress
lim with press board. He will be no
rood on earth, and will haunt music
torres, and have no ambition but to &C
0 some place where there is to be
music, and where he will be called upon
o ''favor the company.
He becomes the laughing stock of his
riends, his parents are ashamed of him,
nd his voice becomes his sole care, and
e never amounts to a row of pins.
When a boy arrives at the guitar period
nd begins to go around as though he
7as too weak to walk and too lazy to eat,
nd crawls off to read novels, and sighs
,hen his mother looks lovingly at him,
hen is the time to wake him up, and
he father is the only one to do it. 1t
as got to be done right away, or it
ill be everlastingly too late, for every
ay that the fever is allowed to remain in
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