Year: 1873

When Mr. Bangs the elder returned from
Europe, he brought with him from Geneva
a miniature musical box, long and very mar
row, and altogether of hardly greater di-
mensions, say, than a large pocket-knife
The instrument played four cheerful little
tunes for the benefit of the Bangs family
and they enjoyed it very much. Young
William Bangs enjoyed it to such an extent
that, one day, just after the machine had
been wound up ready for action, he got to
sucking the end of it, and in moment Of


nadvertence it slipped, and he swallowed
the whole concern. The only immediate
consequence of the accident was that har-
monic stomacha ache was Immediately organ


lied upon the interior of William Bangs,
and he experienced restlessness which he
well knew would defy the soothing tenden-
cies of peppermint and make mockery ol
paregoric.


And William Bangs kept his secret in his
own soul, and in his own stomach
also, determined to hide his misery from his
father, and to spare the rod to the spoiled
child-spoiled, at any rate, as far as his di-
gestive apparatus was concerned.


But that evening at the supper-table, W.
Bangs had eaten but one mouthful of bread
when strains of wild, mysterious music were
suddenly waited from under the table. The
entire family groped around upon the floor
trying to discover from whence the sounds
came, although William Bangs sat there
filed with agony and remorse aud bread and
tunes, and desperately asserted his belief
that the music came from Mary Ann, who
might perhaps be playing upon the harp or
the dulcimer in the cellar. He well knew
that Mary Ann was unfamiliar with the
harp. and that to her the dulcimer was as
much an iusolvable problem as it would
have been to cream-colored horse; and he
was aware that Mary Ann would have
scorned under any circumstances to evoke
music while sitting upon the refrigerator or
reposing in the coal-bin. But he was fran
tic with anxiety to hide his guilt. Thus ii
is that one crime leads to another.


But he could not disguise the truth for
ever, and that very night while the family
was at prayers, William Bangs all at once
got the hiccups, and the music-box at once
started off without any warning with "a
Life on the Ocean Wave and Home on
the Rolling Deep" with variations. Where
upon the paternal Bangs arose from his
knees and grasped William kindly but firm
ly by the hair and shook him up, and in
quired what he meant by such conduct.
And William threw out kind of general
idea to the effect that he was practicing
something for Sunday-school celebration,
which old Bangs intimated was a singularly
thin explanation. Then they tried to get
up that musical-box, and every time they
would seize young William by the legs and
shake him over the sofa cushion, or would
pour some fresh variety of emetic down his
throat, the harmonium within would give a
fresh squirt and joyously grind out " Listen
to the Mocking- Bird or "Thou'lt never
Cease to Love-"


So they abandoned the attempt, and were
compelled to permit that musicalbox to re-
main within the sepulchral recesses of the
epigastrium of William Bangs. To say that
the unfortunate victim of the disaster was
made miserable by his condition would be