6. Music Lessons

Would I like to go! I could hardly believe my ears, but well I knew that my Uncle Worth wouldn’t joke about a matter as serious as that. I took off at top speed for the kitchen door, incoherently spluttered my amazing news to Mama, and without waiting for her reply, danced back to Uncle Worth who had descended his ladder and was opening another bale of pine shingles. He was laughing merrily at my antics. Mama joined us, and her face was sober.

Uncle Worth gave her no chance to object. He had been working hard all summer, he said, and needed a day off. He had never seen such a big circus and he intended to go. And it was my birthday, and he was taking me along.

“But how will you get there?” Mama wanted to know.

Uncle Worth had figured that all out. We would start early and walk the four miles to Kingsland. There we would board a local freight train that carried passengers, and we would be in Fort Wayne in time for the parade. In the afternoon we would see the show and come home that evening.

And so, to my boundless delight, and somewhat to my surprise, it was quickly settled that Uncle Worth and I were to make this thrilling adventure. And, once the matter was decided, Mama seemed pleased that I was to have such an unusual experience. She knew I was safe in the company of Uncle Worth. Never before or since have days been so long as those which intervened.

While we wait for these days to pass I should like to make a few remarks about the singular characteristics of time. In this country, thirty-six inches make a yard and sixteen ounces make a pound avoirdupois. This was true when I was born and it is still true, in all altitudes and all weathers. But the length of a day or an hour has no fixed value: it depends on what you are doing. A day may be of extraordinary length because you are waiting for some anticipated pleasure or it may be overlong because you are in dread of something unpleasant.

An hour of waiting in a hospital corridor for an operation to be completed and an hour spent at a bright and lively musical comedy have no relation at all. Even so small a fragment of time as three minutes has no certain value. Three minutes is a much longer time to the boxers battling in a prize fight than to a pair of lovers talking on the long-distance telephone.

Everything else that is in common use (except our money) has dependable worth; dimension, weight, height, length, breadth, thickness, tensile strength. Everything else is measurable; all forms and forces of power are measurable, by calories, B.T.U.’s, KW’s, H.P.’s, M.P.H.’s, CC’s, etc.

It would be interesting if a precision instrument were invented capable of estimating—by some arbitrary standard—our lengthy hours of waiting for some promised joy, and our longer hours of fretting over some probable calamity. If by the same instrument we could accurately measure the length of our hours in which happiness had been achieved and promised joy fulfilled, and calamity endured or averted, it might be possible to know how long one has lived.