Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1877 — SARAH’S PIANO. [ARTICLE]

SARAH’S PIANO.

It stood up in an attic over the barn where Sarah’s dolls kept house. These dolls were in very reduced circumstances, for you had to climb a ladder to get to their home, and when you got there they had nothing to keep house with but the piano, one broken chair, which was used for a music stool, and a few pieces of dishes; but then, you see, the piano made all the difference in the world, and they seemed quite nice and genteel. The piano was made of a long board £ut up on two old saw-bucks, with little ather-headed tacks driven in for white keys, and black-headed ones forblack keys. It had seven octaves, and if the keys weren't quite straight you must remember that Sarah was only a little girl and that she made the piano all herself. Sarah went up almost every day to give her dolls music lessons, and such a precise little music-teacher I think you never saw.

After she had once climbed the ladder she would adjust herself and come in with a sort of polite squeak to her shoes, and taking out her gold watch, which hung by a shoe-string and which was made of a round piece of pasteboard with lead-pen-cil figures on it, she would say cheerily, “Well, young ladies, I hope you’ve got your music lessons pretty perfect, to-day,” and then she would take the young ladies one by one upon her lap, point out the notes, rap them over the knuckles when they played wrong, praise them and scold them for just the elect number of minutes by the little gold watch. All this was very nice and Sarah enjoyed her piano very much, but one time the little girl cried, and it is about this crying ana what happened along with it that I am going to tell you now. She had been to see Libbie Roberts, and Libbie had one of those real pianos with ivory keys that answer back when you touch them, and Sarah went home feeling discouraged. She climbed up over the barn and sat down by the window with eyes so full of tears that she couldn’t see through the cobwebs that curtained it.

“ Nasty old thing!” she said, looking over to the piano. “It isn’t a piano—so there! It just stands, and stands, and stands, and that’s all it does do, and I never did have anything, and I never shall,” and Sarah put her head into her hands and sobbed such big sobs that I am sure it would have touched the hearts of tne dolls sitting around her, if they had only just been made with hearts inside of them! But by-and-by a ray of sunshine came through the cobwebs, and I think it streamed through Sarah’s fingers and dried up the tears, for she raised her bead and stopped crying. And then a ray of that other kina of sunshine must have crept into her heart, for she went and sat down by the piano and bowed her head lovingly upon it. “ It is a j>lano,” she said, in a soothing voice. “If you only just make believe hard enough, it is one, and it goes off eveiy single time you touch it just as swee| and loud as it can go.” Then she bounced up again and went and put her dolls’ hats upon them, telling them to hurry up, for she was going to take them to a concert. Bhe placed them all in a row on the piano, then seated herself by it and proceeded to give the concert. bhe played and thumped with all her might, while het voice rung out as loud and clear as a whole choir of bird voices after a shower.

I told you that when Sarah was sitting by the window she couldn’t see through, on account of the tears and the cobwebs. If it hadn’t been for these she would have seen her great-aunt Sarah driving up in a little old-fashioned buggy. Aunt Sarah was a nice old lady, but she always wore a black dress and always looked very sober, for almost all her friends were dead and she had seen a great deal of trouble. Sarah’s mother took Aunt Sarah into the front room, gave her a fan and brought her a drink of coin water, for Sarah’s mother was a kind-hearted woman, and she always hated to see Aunt Sarah look so solemn. ' < I '‘ : When she couldn’t think of anything else to cheer her up, she asked her if she didn’t want to go to the barn and see a new-fashioned hen, that laid a very large egg. Aunt Sarah didn’t care about newfashioned hens, but she followed Sarah's mamma to the barn, and they got there just as the concert Bp-stairs was at its height, and they stood in the barn-door ana listened while Sarah sung, “I want to be an Angel,” and "Home, Sweet Home," without a quiver in her voice, never once thinking that anybody but the dolls were attending the concert.

"la that little Sarah?” taked Aunt Sarah, at last. ” Yes,” Mid Sarah’s irimmt *• She’s got an old board marked off up there, that she calls her piano, and the poor little thing goes op every day to play on it,” and Sarah’s mamma’s face looked real sorry for just a minute. Annt Sarah didn’t mt anything. She glanced at the eggs, then went into the house, and by-and by, aftei taking another drink of cold water, started for borne. While she waMddlog along, little Sarah’s " Home, Sweet Home,” rung in her ears, and once she looked into the sky with a sort of smile, as though searching for the “ Sweet Home” in that direction. Then somehow she remembered, in connection with Sarah’s song, that the little baby girl had been named after henelf, and that sbe had never in all her life given her namesake a present And so it all came about that, In a few days after that, there came a big boxedup present to little Sarah, from Aunt Sarah. It wasn’t a piano exactly, but it was a beautiful parler organ with a row of stops that made the music in it tremble, or grow shrill, or deep, and didn’t leave hardly.a chance for “ making believe” in any variety of sound. Of course Sarah was perfectly delighted, and you may well Imagine that after that she rather neglected her old piano and the musical education of her dolls. But although she is now a young lady and gives real music lessons, she sometimes steals up to the barn-attic and runs her fingers tenderly over the old board piano keys for the sake of old times—Che dear old times when it was so easy to make believe and be happy.— Youth't Companion.