ost singular of all instrumental sounds,
those fifty or sixty antagonistic voluntaries with which all the
audience would voluntarily dispense, consisting of chromatics in twenty
different keys, violin octaves, harmonics, thirds and fifths, clarionet
shakes, flute staccatos, horn growlings, ophicleide rumblings,
triangular vibrations, and drum concussions.

"See to their desks Apollo's sons repair--
Swift rides the rosin o'er the horse's hair!
In unison their various tones to tune,
Murmurs the hautboy, growls the hoarse bassoon.
In soft vibration sighs the whispering lute,
Twang goes the harpsicord, too too the flute,
Brays the loud trumpet, squeaks the fiddle sharp,
Winds the French horn, and twangs the tingling harp."

About the time that the observer has made up in his mind an answer to
the following mental queries--how many nights the first violinist could
play without getting a crick in the neck--whether the flutist may not
sometime blow his eyes so far out of his head that he may never be able
to get them back again--how long it would take the operator on the
_cornet a piston_ to learn to play on the magnetic telegraph--why such a
small man should be suffered to perform on such a big thing as an
ophicleide, and how a person with such a huge moustache can get the
piccola up to lips defended by such a bulwark of hair, a fermentation is
observable in the midst of this musical whirlpool, which indicates the
presence of some higher power. Place is given by the humble members of
the orchestra, and the director is seen to stand forth in the attitude
of mounting the tribunal from whence he guides his submissive subjects
with despotic sway. He is a neat figured little man, with a profusion of
methodically adjusted curls, a moustache that would render his
physiognomy excessively ferocious, if an occasional smile playing over
the distinguishable parts of his face, did not modify this expression.
He is attired in the costume of the ball room, bearing in his button
hole the most delicate rosebud of the conservatory, and in his perfectly
gloved hand, an amber headed baton, the sceptre of command. At his
appearance a wave of applause floats up from the audience, and the head
and breast of the director bend down to meet it in a graceful and
reverential bow, accompanied by a smile expressing the highest possible
amount of inward gratification. This little acknowledgment of a becoming
respect for t