precocious infants, which had a pettitoe in, one
hand, and a long clay pipe in the other;
"nothing," said the good woman, picking up the
pettitoe for the seventh time, and restoring the
glistening morsel now profusely adorned with
sawdust, to her offspring; "will keep him good,
like giving him a 'bacco-pipe to play with. It
will keep him quiet for hours." And indeed
the chief object of this child appeared to be
the thrusting of the sharp end of his
plaything by turns into every one of those orifices
in the anatomy of the face and head, which
Nature has beneficently intended as the apertures
by which the things of the external world shall
be brought to bear upon the brain.

By this time the room had begun to fill to an
almost inconvenient extent, and the more
convivial aspects of the evening's entertainment to
develop themselves. The amusements were
entirely of a musical, and mainly of a vocal,
nature. The chairman led the way, and,
producing a great order and silence by a free use of
his hammer, proceeded to enliven the company
with a performance which had the great charm
of leaving a great deal to the imagination:
both the words and tune being characterised
by a certain vagueness which made it
possible for any gentleman or lady present to
suppose that the ballad in course of delivery was
his or her own especial favourite: it being as
impossible to define what the song was not as to
come to any conclusion as to what it was. This
effort (which was extremely popular) was
followed by an amiable discussion between the
"chair" and a tall and obstinate person at the
other end of the room, who rejoiced in the
name of 'Arry, as to why he ('Arry) should
not be the next to promote the enjoyment of
the evening. This controversy having ended
in the defeat of the chair, as far as logical
argument was concerned, and another gentleman,
having consented to sing, in order to put an end
to strife, it happened next that this last-named
person had no sooner opened his mouth, than
the unmanageable 'Arry, who was a species of
vice-chair, and was also provided with a hammer,
availed himself of that instrument to put down
the volunteer gentleman, and himself began singing
that very song with which he had just before
been in vain entreated to "oblige." This
obstinate gentleman was endowed by nature with
an organ with which it was useless to attempt
to contend, and bellowed away for about twenty
minutes, much to the satisfaction of the audience.
This done, the boys began to come forward, and
some remarkable phenomena became developed.
One of these young gentlemen was a touchy
youth, and, leaving off if anybody made a noise,
was not to be persuaded to recommence, without
much apologising and administration of soothing
and pacificatory compliments from the chair.
There was also an undecided personage, who
resembled an ill-wound musical-box, and who,
getting on very tolerably through two or three
verses, would then begin to run down, would
wax fainter, and finally stop, and who, being
wound up again by the comfort and applause of the
public, went at it once more, performed another
verse or two, and again needing and receiving
stimulus, went on to the end. The vocalist who
kept guard over his mouth by holding the sealing-
waxed end of his pipe before his lips, as if it were
a musical instrument, favoured the company at
such length that your Eye-witness, leaving him, at
the end of his sixth verse, to go out and breathe
a little fresh air, and returning after a brisk walk
of half a mile, found him still at it, and with
the pipe certainly—and the song apparently—
exactly where he had left it.

There was a great choice and variety of singers,
who were yet in one respect all alike, and all
labouring under a common difficulty—they none
of them knew what to do with their eyes. It
was in this, as in many other matters, that
the wisdom of age was very apparent. The
"chair," a gentleman somewhat advanced in
years, had no sooner suspended the action of his
hammer, with which he proclaimed that he was
about to begin, than he closed his eyes firmly,
and opened them no more until his vocal
exercise had ceased. It was wonderful that this
obvious way of getting out of a great difficulty
did not suggest itself to any of the younger
members of the company. Every other optical
resource was resorted to. There was the faint
vocalist who looked down at his hands while he
performed, as in a retrospective calculation touching
the exact period of his youth when they had
last been washed; there was the loud vocalist,
who "fixed" an opposite friend during his song,
till the friend—it was a very long performance
—actually writhed under the steadiness of the
singer's glare. Then there was the gentleman
who looked at the wall just over the public head:
a proceeding which caused him to wear a very
dreadful and sinister aspect indeed, and which
threw a chill upon all the company. Lastly,
there were the two great classes, or divisions, of
the vocalists who looked up, and the vocalists
who looked down. These last—except in the
instance given above of the gentleman with the
hands—would commonly direct a searching gaze
into the depths of a pint-pot, or would engage to
all appearance in an analytical examination of
the calcined contents of an extinct tobacco-pipe.
They were but a limited number, in comparison
with the up-looking portion of the company, for
certainly out of six vocalists the ocular refuge
of five was in the stained and blackened ceiling
of the concert-room.

For some time after the commencement of the
musical proceedings a great degree of order was
maintained. There was a long period during which
not more than one gentleman sang at once, and,
even after this desirable state of things could be
counted upon no longer, there was still half an
hour or so of comparative discipline when the
president's hammer was so far respected that
only two or three vocalists would be found
enlivening the company with different songs at
the same moment. Gradually, however, with
the increased number of the guests, a corresponding
increase of singers was observable, and the
philanthropic desire of these gentlemen to