for their victim, with craven Pollio straining
his larynx to top the horrid din, all would be
brought up suddenly by harsh and repeated
strokes of a ruler on the piano.

"Stop, stop, stop!" Mrs. Malkyn would
be heard to exclaim. "Mr. Jackson, be so
good as to take that passage just one-third as
slow again. See, thus: one—-two—-three!"

To her Jones, bridling with secret rage and
mortification.

"Pardon me, Mrs. Malkyn, but I took
especial pains with Jackson about that very
passage—-it is the way they do it in London."

"I have heard Pasta," ripostes Mrs. Malkyn,
taking off her spectacles, and clearing
away for action, "and Malibran, and Grisi,
and not one of them—-no, not one of them—-
ever took it that way."

"Costa does," says Belmore Jones, with
ashy lips.

"Never!" says Mrs. Malkyn, trembling;
"would you turn it into a jig?"

"Or make it a slow march?" says Jones,
tauntingly.

At this stage, the Druids and others desirous
of peace would interpose, and, under cover
of a hurly-burly of "Go on! Never mind!"
bewildered Jackson, who was by nature a
trimmer, would start with a sort of neutral
tempo. And so the difficulty would be got over.

Sometimes, I grieve to say, Jones utterly
forgot himself, and being drunk, as it were,
with the fumes of music, would utter
language disrespectful to Mrs. Malkyn. At
which outrage the injured lady would retire
to a remote sofa, and there and then beg to
be relieved of all further responsibility in the
concern. They could do very well without
her, she saw; there were wiser heads than
hers to direct them. At which prospect of
being utterly stranded, and abandoned to
their own devices, the whole company would
be aghast. Horrid visions of the funded
moneys, now diverted to charitable and other
uses, began to loom upon the Lightbody
family; and Miss Bandoline, with her
priestesses, would gather distractedly round
the remote sofa, and offer such gentle alleviation
as was in their power. At last, the
pupil of the great Braham would give way,
and suffer herself to be led again to the
instrument, and Mendelssohn Jackson took
up once more the suspended strain.

The great day drew gradually near. The
demand for tickets,—-under the new system!
—-grew up to an amazing height; and the
committee, sitting daily at Tritonville, found
themselves whelmed in a heavy, but not
unpleasing press of business. The difficulty
was, said the Reverend Hoblush, where you
were to draw the line,—-outside the general
practitioner's wife, whose social status was
unhappily not so clearly defined; while
his licensed brother, with letters of marque
from St. Andrew's, was to be privileged to
deposit his vulgar person upon one of our
reserved seats without stop or hindrance?
Such questions were of grave moment, and, I
believe, caused Mrs. Lightbody many a
sleepless night.

At length the great day, long expected and
desired, had come round. Belmore Jones,
and others, had spent it journeying
incessantly between Mrs. Lightbody's and the
rooms. There was a wild excitement about
his movements that made it hazardous to
cross, or otherwise interfere with him.
Westminster Abbey or a peerage, he was heard
to mutter to himself many times,—-
unconsciously identifying himself with one of
England's greatest heroes. It was often told
afterwards how the Reverend Hoblush had
hurried through certain christening
ceremonials that came thickly on him that
morning, despatching them with haste and
manifest impatience. How, too, he had cast
from him his surplice, and has hurried away
with the rest in the direction of the rooms.
Half the town were looking on at the
preparations. The whole of that day there was
a stream of chairs, and upholstery, directed
on the concerts; and men, with hammers
and baize aprons, were known to have been
at work up to a late hour.

At precisely half-past seven o'clock the
doors were thrown open, and almost
immediately, the company began to pour in. They
were marshalled and conducted to convenient
sittings by the stewards, who might be
styled, not improperly, the great Institution
of the night. Everybody was a steward,
and bore a white wand. I was a steward;
Belmore Jones was a steward; the Reverend
Hoblush was a steward, and bore a white
wand. Even the bulk of singing and
playing-men, found decent excuse to slip down,
and fill for a short span the duties of that
office. It was a sight to see us standing
at intervals, leaning on our staves,
used much after the manner of Spanish
piccadores, inflaming remote and choleric
gentlemen by repeated lunges in the regions
of the breast. I have my suspicions that
the stewards must have been found an
outspeaking nuisance, that night—-their
deportment being in many instances tyrannical.
As each lady and gentleman passed the
threshold, a courteous steward, specially
selected for his insinuating manners, stepped
forward with a programme containing the
events of the night. A copy still remains to
me of which the following is a faithful
transcript:

DATCHLEY
AMATEUR PHILHARMONIC UNION.

UNDER DISTINGUISHED PATRONAGE.

Parte Prima.

Overture        .       .       .       .                            Full Orchestra.

Scotch Ballad, "Cam' hame wi' the                    } Miss Bandoline
Kail"                                                                     Lightbody

Solo, Violoncello. Reverend Alfred                    } Mendelssohn
Hoblush                                                               Jackson

Orphean Quartetto, "The Alpine                        }
Hunter"