There lived in Boston a wise and ancient chemist by the name of Dr. Daws, who
dabbled somewhat in magic. There also lived in Boston a young lady by the name
of Claribel Sudds, who was possessed of much money, little wit and an intense
desire to go upon the stage.
So Claribel went to Dr. Daws and said:
“I can neither sing nor dance; I cannot recite verse nor play upon the
piano; I am no acrobat nor leaper nor high kicker; yet I wish to go upon the
stage. What shall I do?”
“Are you willing to pay for such accomplishments?” asked the wise
chemist.
“Certainly,” answered Claribel, jingling her purse.
“Then come to me to-morrow at two o’clock,” said he.
All that night he practiced what is known as chemical sorcery; so that when
Claribel Sudds came next day at two o’clock he showed her a small box
filled with compounds that closely resembled French bonbons.
“This is a progressive age,” said the old man, “and I flatter
myself your Uncle Daws keeps right along with the procession. Now, one of your
old-fashioned sorcerers would have made you some nasty, bitter pills to
swallow; but I have consulted your taste and convenience. Here are some magic
bonbons. If you eat this one with the lavender color you can dance thereafter
as lightly and gracefully as if you had been trained a lifetime. After you
consume the pink confection you will sing like a nightingale. Eating the white
one will enable you to become the finest elocutionist in the land. The
chocolate piece will charm you into playing the piano better than Rubenstein,
while after eating the lemon-yellow bonbon you can easily kick six feet above
your head.”
“How delightful!” exclaimed Claribel, who was truly enraptured.
“You are certainly a most clever sorcerer as well as a considerate
compounder,” and she held out her hand for the box.
“Ahem!” said the wise one; “a check, please.”
“Oh, yes; to be sure! How stupid of me to forget it,” she returned.
He considerately retained the box in his own hand while she signed a check for
a large amount of money, after which he allowed her to hold the box herself.
“Are you sure you have made them strong enough?” she inquired,
anxiously; “it usually takes a great deal to affect me.”
“My only fear,” replied Dr. Daws, “is that I have made them
too strong. For this is the first time I have ever been called upon to prepare
these wonderful confections.”
“Don’t worry,” said Claribel; “the stronger they act
the better I shall act myself.”
She went away, after saying this, but stopping in at a dry goods store to shop,
she forgot the precious box in her new interest and left it lying on the ribbon
counter.
Then little Bessie Bostwick came to the counter to buy a hair ribbon and laid
her parcels beside the box. When she went away she gathered up the box with her
other bundles and trotted off home with it.
Bessie never knew, until after she had hung her coat in the hall closet and
counted up her parcels, that she had one too many. Then she opened it and
exclaimed:
“Why, it’s a box of candy! Someone must have mislaid it. But it is
too small a matter to worry about; there are only a few pieces.” So she
dumped the contents of the box into a bonbon dish that stood upon the hall
table and picking out the chocolate piece—she was fond of
chocolates—ate it daintily while she examined her purchases.
These were not many, for Bessie was only twelve years old and was not yet
trusted by her parents to expend much money at the stores. But while she tried
on the hair ribbon she suddenly felt a great desire to play upon the piano, and
the desire at last became so overpowering that she went into the parlor and
opened the instrument.
The little girl had, with infinite pains, contrived to learn two
“pieces” which she usually executed with a jerky movement of her
right hand and a left hand that forgot to keep up and so made dreadful
discords. But under the influence of the chocolate bonbon she sat down and ran
her fingers lightly over the keys producing such exquisite harmony that she was
filled with amazement at her own performance.
That was the prelude, however. The next moment she dashed into
Beethoven’s seventh sonata and played it magnificently.
Her mother, hearing the unusual burst of melody, came downstairs to see what
musical guest had arrived; but when she discovered it was her own little
daughter who was playing so divinely she had an attack of palpitation of the
heart (to which she was subject) and sat down upon a sofa until it should pass
away.
Meanwhile Bessie played one piece after another with untiring energy. She loved
music, and now found that all she need do was to sit at the piano and listen
and watch her hands twinkle over the keyboard.
Twilight deepened in the room and Bessie’s father came home and hung up
his hat and overcoat and placed his umbrella in the rack. Then he peeped into
the parlor to see who was playing.
“Great Caesar!” he exclaimed. But the mother came to him softly
with her finger on her lips and whispered: “Don’t interrupt her,
John. Our child seems to be in a trance. Did you ever hear such superb
music?”
“Why, she’s an infant prodigy!” gasped the astounded father.
“Beats Blind Tom all hollow! It’s—it’s
wonderful!”
As they stood listening the senator arrived, having been invited to dine with
them that evening. And before he had taken off his coat the Yale
professor—a man of deep learning and scholarly attainments—joined
the party.
Bessie played on; and the four elders stood in a huddled but silent and amazed
group, listening to the music and waiting for the sound of the dinner gong.
Mr. Bostwick, who was hungry, picked up the bonbon dish that lay on the table
beside him and ate the pink confection. The professor was watching him, so Mr.
Bostwick courteously held the dish toward him. The professor ate the
lemon-yellow piece and the senator reached out his hand and took the lavender
piece. He did not eat it, however, for, chancing to remember that it might
spoil his dinner, he put it in his vest pocket. Mrs. Bostwick, still intently
listening to her precocious daughter, without thinking what she did, took the
remaining piece, which was the white one, and slowly devoured it.
The dish was now empty, and Claribel Sudds’ precious bonbons had passed
from her possession forever!
Suddenly Mr. Bostwick, who was a big man, began to sing in a shrill, tremolo
soprano voice. It was not the same song Bessie was playing, and the discord was
shocking that the professor smiled, the senator put his hands to his ears and
Mrs. Bostwick cried in a horrified voice:
“William!”
Her husband continued to sing as if endeavoring to emulate the famous Christine
Nillson, and paid no attention whatever to his wife or his guests.
Fortunately the dinner gong now sounded, and Mrs. Bostwick dragged Bessie from
the piano and ushered her guests into the dining-room. Mr. Bostwick followed,
singing “The Last Rose of Summer” as if it had been an encore
demanded by a thousand delighted hearers.
The poor woman was in despair at witnessing her husband’s undignified
actions and wondered what she might do to control him. The professor seemed
more grave than usual; the senator’s face wore an offended expression,
and Bessie kept moving her fingers as if she still wanted to play the piano.
Mrs. Bostwick managed to get them all seated, although her husband had broken
into another aria; and then the maid brought in the soup.
When she carried a plate to the professor, he cried, in an excited voice:
“Hold it higher! Higher—I say!” And springing up he gave it a
sudden kick that sent it nearly to the ceiling, from whence the dish descended
to scatter soup over Bessie and the maid and to smash in pieces upon the crown
of the professor’s bald head.
At this atrocious act the senator rose from his seat with an exclamation of
horror and glanced at his hostess.
For some time Mrs. Bostwick had been staring straight ahead, with a dazed
expression; but now, catching the senator’s eye, she bowed gracefully and
began reciting “The Charge of the Light Brigade” in forceful tones.
The senator shuddered. Such disgraceful rioting he had never seen nor heard
before in a decent private family. He felt that his reputation was at stake,
and, being the only sane person, apparently, in the room, there was no one to
whom he might appeal.
The maid had run away to cry hysterically in the kitchen; Mr. Bostwick was
singing “O Promise Me;” the professor was trying to kick the globes
off the chandelier; Mrs. Bostwick had switched her recitation to “The Boy
Stood on the Burning Deck,” and Bessie had stolen into the parlor and was
pounding out the overture from the “Flying Dutchman.”
The senator was not at all sure he would not go crazy himself, presently; so he
slipped away from the turmoil, and, catching up his had and coat in the hall,
hurried from the house.
That night he sat up late writing a political speech he was to deliver the next
afternoon at Faneuil hall, but his experiences at the Bostwicks’ had so
unnerved him that he could scarcely collect his thoughts, and often he would
pause and shake his head pityingly as he remembered the strange things he had
seen in that usually respectable home.
The next day he met Mr. Bostwick in the street, but passed him by with a stony
glare of oblivion. He felt he really could not afford to know this gentleman in
the future. Mr. Bostwick was naturally indignant at the direct snub; yet in his
mind lingered a faint memory of some quite unusual occurrences at his dinner
party the evening before, and he hardly knew whether he dared resent the
senator’s treatment or not.
The political meeting was the feature of the day, for the senator’s
eloquence was well known in Boston. So the big hall was crowded with people,
and in one of the front rows sat the Bostwick family, with the learned Yale
professor beside them. They all looked tired and pale, as if they had passed a
rather dissipated evening, and the senator was rendered so nervous by seeing
them that he refused to look in their direction a second time.
While the mayor was introducing him the great man sat fidgeting in his chair;
and, happening to put his thumb and finger into his vest pocket, he found the
lavender-colored bonbon he had placed there the evening before.
“This may clear my throat,” thought the senator, and slipped the
bonbon into his mouth.
A few minutes afterwards he arose before the vast audience, which greeted him
with enthusiastic plaudits.
“My friends,” began the senator, in a grave voice, “this is a
most impressive and important occasion.”
Then he paused, balanced himself upon his left foot, and kicked his right leg
into the air in the way favored by ballet-dancers!
There was a hum of amazement and horror from the spectators, but the senator
appeared not to notice it. He whirled around upon the tips of his toes, kicked
right and left in a graceful manner, and startled a bald-headed man in the
front row by casting a languishing glance in his direction.
Suddenly Claribel Sudds, who happened to be present, uttered a scream and
sprang to her feet. Pointing an accusing finger at the dancing senator, she
cried in a loud voice:
“That’s the man who stole my bonbons! Seize him! Arrest him!
Don’t let him escape!”
But the ushers rushed her out of the hall, thinking she had gone suddenly
insane; and the senator’s friends seized him firmly and carried him out
the stage entrance to the street, where they put him into an open carriage and
instructed the driver to take him home.
The effect of the magic bonbon was still powerful enough to control the poor
senator, who stood upon the rear seat of the carriage and danced energetically
all the way home, to the delight of the crowd of small boys who followed the
carriage and the grief of the sober-minded citizens, who shook their heads
sadly and whispered that “another good man had gone wrong.”
It took the senator several months to recover from the shame and humiliation of
this escapade; and, curiously enough, he never had the slightest idea what had
induced him to act in so extraordinary a manner. Perhaps it was fortunate the
last bonbon had now been eaten, for they might easily have caused considerably
more trouble than they did.
Of course Claribel went again to the wise chemist and signed a check for
another box of magic bonbons; but she must have taken better care of these, for
she is now a famous vaudeville actress.
This story should teach us the folly of condemning others for actions that we
do not understand, for we never know what may happen to ourselves. It may also
serve as a hint to be careful about leaving parcels in public places, and,
incidentally, to let other people’s packages severely alone.
