isals are made, and lines of discord and dissonance
are establishing, which require the police, the magistrate, and the
riot act. Bravo! bravo! bravo! and the battle ceases, and the _babble_
commences. Place for the foreign train, the performers _par metier!_
Full of confidence are they; amidst all their smiles and
obsequiousness, there is a business air about the thing. As soon as
the pianist has asked the piano how it finds itself, and the piano has
intimated that it is pretty well, but somewhat out of tune, a
collateral fiddler and a violoncello brace up their respective nerves,
compare notes, and when their drawlings and crookings are in unison, a
third piece of music of indefinite duration, and as it seems to us all
about nothing, begins. Our violinist is evidently not long come out,
and has little to recommend him--he employs but a second-rate tailor,
wears no collar, dirty mustaches, and a tight coat; he is ill at ease,
poor man, wincing, pulling down his coat-sleeves, or pulling up his
braces over their respective shoulders. His strings soon become moist
with the finger dew of exertion and trepidation; his bow draws out
nothing but groans or squeals; and so, in order to correct these
visceral complaints, a piece of rosin is awkwardly produced from his
trousers' pocket, and applied to the rheumatic member, with some
half-dozen brisk rubs in a parenthesis of music. The effect is
painfully ludicrous!----

I am _sleepy_, _sleepy_, begins the piano! Sleepy, sleepy, _mews_ Mr
Violin--very, very, very sleepy, drones the drowsy four-stringed
leviathan. Oh, do try if you can't say something, something, something
to enliven one a bit! On this hint, the little violin first got
excited upon one string, and then upon another, and then the bow rode
a hand-gallop over two at once; then saw we four fingers flying as far
up the finger-board as they could go, without falling overboard, near
the _bridge_--a dangerous place at all times from the currents and
eddies--and there provoking a series of sounds, as if the performer
were pinching the tails of a dozen mice, that squeaked and squealed as
he made the experiment. The bow (like the funambulist with the soles
of his slippers fresh chalked) kept glancing on and off, till we hoped
he would be off altogether and break his neck; and now the least harsh
and grating of the cords snaps up in the fiddler's face, and a crude
one is to be applied; and now--but what is the use of pursuing