Books › Ole Bull: a memoir; with Ole Bull's 'Violin notes' and A. B. Crosby's 'Anatomy of the violinist', 1897 › scan 28
Scan 28
Ole Bull: a memoir; with Ole Bull's 'Violin notes' and A. B. Crosby's 'Anatomy of the violinist', 1897
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1try it, just a very, very little; and it did sing to me so sweetly! Then I did creep farther away from the bedroom. At first, I did play very soft. I make very, very little noise. But presently I did begin a capriccio which I like very much; and it do go ever louder and louder; and I forgot that it was midnight and that everybody was asleep. Presently, I hear something go crack! and the next minute I feel my father's whip across my shoulders. My little red violin dropped on the floor, and was broken. I weep much for it, but it did no good. They did have a doctor to it next day, but it never recovered its health.
3The tears would always fill Ole Bull's eyes when he spoke of this great childish sorrow.
5The violin with which he now practiced was too large for him. When he placed it in the usual position for playing, it hurt his neck and fingers, and compelled him to hold his arm in the way which from that time became a habit with him. At ten years of age he could play passages which his teacher found it impossible to perform; but nothing would come to him by the mechanical process. His genius positively refused to go into the strait-jacket; and when father and teacher coaxed and scolded, the nervous child at last screamed with agony. This untamable freedom was his strongest characteristic. At school the confinement of four walls would sometimes become so oppressive that he would suddenly
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