[During his last year as a Bluecoat scholar at the Free School in Gainsborough, Thomas Cooper became a choirboy in the church]

My preferment to the singing-loft had a more important result.  It brought to our house the father of the organist, old Mr. Hand, a gentlemanly person, though he had a wooden leg.  He was a great player on the dulcimer.  The instrument was soon brought to our house; and I became so enamoured of it, that my mother eventually purchased it for thirty shillings.  A few lessons, by the ear, I had from the old gentleman; and soon was able to play, by the ear, any tune I knew, or heard sung or played in the street.  How often I have wished that the dulcimer had been a violin, or a pianoforte, and that I had been taught music by the notes,—had been taught to read music at that age.  Such wishes are vain; but l have them, and of various forms.