An Ohio friend related his experience to me. Jenny Lind was to sing in Wheeling, West Virginia, and he lived just sixty miles west, towards Columbus. He was then a boy of eighteen, and had been for three years apprenticed to a clock-maker. His father was a clergyman, with a large family and small salary, and though a warm-hearted music lover, was too poor to think of going to hear Jenny Lind. Father and son had read together a long notice of the approaching song-festival in Wheeling, and the father had remarked with a sigh of resignation, “ I wish I could hear her.”

The son determined to try and go to Wheeling for that purpose.

[…]

In short, my friend spent three days on the road to Wheeling, mending clocks by the way and getting a little money for each. He reached Wheeling, paid three dollars for his concert ticket, heard Jenny Lind, and returned home in a two days’ march. His father asked him where he had been, and he answered  that he had walked to Wheeling, mended clocks, earned money to hear Jenny Lind, and was happy. The father saw that he had a son who was made out of good stuff, embraced him, and said not one word of reproof.