is to cure the medicine.

CHAPTER X

YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT A MUSICAL EVENING

Say! did you ever stray away from home of an evening and go to one of
those parlor riots?

Friend wife called it a _musicale_, but to me it looked like a session
of the Mexican congress in a boiler factory.

They pulled it off at Mrs. Luella Frothingham's, over on the Drive.

I like Luella and I like her husband, Jack Frothingham, so it's no
secret conclave of the Anvil Association when I whisper them wise that
the next time they give a musical evening my address is Forest Avenue,
corner of Foliage Street, in the woods.

The Frothinghams are nice people and old friends and they have more
money than some people have hay, but that doesn't give them a license to
spoil one of my perfectly good evenings by sprinkling a lot of canned
music and fricasseed recitations all over it.

The Frothinghams have a skeleton in their closet. Its name is Uncle Heck
and he weighs 237--not bad for a skeleton. Uncle Heck is a Joe Morgan.
His sole ambition in life is to become politely pickled and fall asleep
draped over a gold chair in the drawing room when there's high-class
company present.

For that reason the Frothinghams on state occasions put the skids under
Uncle Heck and run him off stage till after the final curtain.

On some occasions Uncle Heck breaks through the bars and dashes into the
scene of refinement with merry quip and jest to the confusion of his
relatives and the ill-concealed amusement of their guests.

This was one of those occasions.

Early in the evening Jack took Uncle Heck to his room, sat him in front
of a quart of vintage, and left the old geezer there to slosh around in
the surf until sleep claimed him for its own.

But after the wine was gone Uncle Heck put on the gloves with Morpheus,
got the decision, marched down stairs and into the drawing room, where
he immediately insisted upon being the life of the party.

Uncle Heck moved and seconded that he sing the swan song from
_Lohengrin_, but his idea of a swan was so much like a turkey gobbler
that loving friends slipped him the moccasins and elbowed him out of the
room.

Then he went out in the butler's pantry, hoping to do an Omar Khayyam
with the grape, but, not finding any, he began to recite, "Down in the
Lehigh Valley me and my people grew; I was a blacksmith, Cap'n; yes, and
a good one, too! Let me sit down a minute, a stone's got into my
shoe----"