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“Old Bull's concert!” said Mrs. Partington, glancing
up from her knitting as she read the announcement
of the grand concert on Saturday evening, and she smiled
as the ridiculous fancy ran through her mind, like a grass-hopper
in a stubble field, of an old bull giving a concert.
“And yet it is n't so very wonderful,” continued she,
“for I remember a cat and canary that lived together,
and one or t' other of 'em used to sing beautifully. But
I wonder what he plays on.”

Ike suggested that he played on one of his own horns,
which seemed to be reasonable.

“I am glad he is going to give his concert, because,
when I went down to hear a great artisan play on a
violence, as they called it, though I found out afterwards
it was nothing but a fiddle, they were going to charge a
dollar till I told 'em I was one of the connections of the
Post, and they let me in. I can't think what music an
old bull can make, I 'm sure. It must be very uproarious,
I should think, and better fitted for overturns than
for pastureal music.”

She closed her critique with a pinch of snuff, and got
on to her wires again like a telegraphic despatch, and
went ahead, while Ike amused himself by scratching his
name with a board nail in magnificent Roman capitals
upon the newly-painted panel of the kitchen door.

p677-216

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