and then in the wrong place, and put the other performers out.  It is, however, but justice to Mr. Brown to say that he did this to admiration.  The overture, in fact, was not unlike a race between the different instruments; the piano came in first by several bars, and the violoncello next, quite distancing the poor flute; for the deaf gentleman too-too’d away, quite unconscious that he was at all wrong, until apprised, by the applause of the audience, that the overture was concluded.

It was probably after this that the pianoforte player fainted away, owing to the heat, and left the music of Masaniello to the other two.  There were differences between these remaining musicians and Mr. Harleigh, who played the title role, the orchestra complaining that ’Mr. Harleigh put them out, while the hero declared that the orchestra prevented his singing a note.’

It was to the strains of a wandering harp and fiddle that Marion and Grace Jeddler danced ‘a trifle in the Spanish style,’ much to their father’s astonishment as he came bustling out to see who ‘played music on his property before breakfast.’

The little fiddle commonly known as a ‘kit’ that dancing-masters used to carry in their capacious tail coat pockets was much more in evidence in the middle of last century than it is now.  Caddy Jellyby (B.H.), after her marriage to a dancing-master, found a knowledge of the piano and the kit essential, and so she used to practise them assiduously.  When Sampson Brass hears Kit’s name for the first time he says to Swiveller: 

    ’Strange name—­name of a dancing-master’s fiddle,
    eh, Mr. Richard?’

We must not forget the story of a fine young Irish gentleman, as told by the one-eyed bagman to Mr. Pickwick and his friends, who,

    being asked if he could play the fiddle, replied he
    had no doubt he could, but he couldn’t exactly say
    for certain, because he had never tried.

Violoncello

Mr. Morfin (D. & S.), ’a cheerful-looking, hazel-eyed elderly bachelor,’ was

a great musical amateur—­in his way—­after business, and had a paternal affection for his violoncello, which was once in every week transported from Islington, his place of abode, to a certain club-room hard by the Bank, where quartets of the most tormenting and excruciating nature were executed every Wednesday evening by a private party.

His habit of humming his musical recollections of these evenings was a source of great annoyance to Mr. James Carker, who devoutly wished ’that he would make a bonfire of his violoncello, and burn his books with it.’  There was only a thin partition between the rooms which these two gentlemen occupied, and on another occasion Mr. Morfin performed an extraordinary feat in order to warn the manager of his presence.

    I have whistled, hummed tunes, gone accurately through
    the whole of Beethoven’s Sonata in B, to let him know
    that I was within hearing, but he never heeded me.