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hadn't paid for, but I went out and took it, because it contained a little fresh air.
Some day I will mention the name of this railroad company and make them blush.
Well, after I left Bunch that afternoon, I ducked for the depot, and reached Ruraldene just in time to witness the beginning of a most painful episode.
The house was lighted up from cellar to attic. As soon as I opened the door I found our respected Mayor, Uncle Peter, and he was also lit up.
"It's a surprise, Johnny," he whispered hoarsely. "Clara J. is giving an entertainment for the benefit of the Christian Soldiers' League, and it's going to cost you two dollars to come into your own house."
It made an awful hit with Uncle Peter to see me cough up those two bones, but I said nothing and made good.
My wife called it a musicale, but to me it looked more like a fight.
With the help of Aunt Martha and Alice Grey, my wife arranged the programme and kept it dark to surprise the rest of the family.
It was such a surprise to me that I felt like doing a glide to the woodlands.
It was my second experience with a musicale, and this one cured me all right.
You know I don't care much for society--especially when it breaks into our bungalow and begins to scratch my furniture with its high-heeled shoes. But just to please Peaches I promised to go in the parlor and not be an insult to those present.
For awhile everybody sat around and sized up what everybody else was wearing.
Then they gave each other the silent double-cross.
Presently my wife whispered to Miss Cleopatra Hungerschnitz, whereupon that young lady giggled her way over to the piano and began to knock its teeth out.
The way Cleopatra went after one of Beethoven's sonatas and slapped its ears was pitiful.
Cleopatra learned to injure a piano at a conservatory of music, and she could take a fugo by Victor Hugo and leave it for dead in about thirty-two bars.
At the finish of the sonata we all applauded Cleopatra just as loudly as we could, in the hope that she would faint with surprise and stop playing, but no such luck.
She tied a couple of chords together and swung that piano like a pair of Indian clubs.
First she did "My Old Kentucky Home," with variations, until everybody who had a home began to weep for fear it might get to be like her Kentucky home.
The variations were where she made a mistake and struck the right note.
Then Cleopatra moved up to the squeaky end of the piano and gave an imitation of a Swiss music box.
It sounded to me like a Swiss cheese.
Presently Cleopatra ran out of raw material and subsided, while we all applauded her with our fingers crossed, and two very thoughtful ladies began to talk fast to Cleopatra so as to take her mind off the piano.
Then the Bingledingle brothers, known as Oscar and Victor, opened fire on us with a couple of mandolins.
Oscar and Victor play entirely by hand. They don't know one note from another, and they can prove it when they begin to play.
Their mother believes them to be prodigies of genius. She is alone in her belief.
After Oscar and Victor had chased one of Sousa's marches all over the parlor and finally left it unconscious under the sofa, they bowed and ceased firing, and then they went out in the dining-room and filled their storage batteries with ice cream and cake.
This excitement was followed by another catastrophe named Minnehaha Jones, who picked up a couple of soprano songs and screeched them at us.
Minnehaha is one of those fearless singers who vocalize without a safety valve. She always keeps her eyes closed, so she can't tell just when her audience gets up and leaves the room.
The next treat was a mixed duet on the flute and trombone between Clarence Smith and Lancelot Diffenberger, with a violin obligate on the side by Hector Tompkins.
Never before have I seen music so roughly handled.
It looked like a walk-over for Clarence, but in the fifth round he blew a couple of green notes and Lancelot got the decision.
Then, for a consolation prize, Hector was led out in the middle of the room, where he assassinated Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana so thoroughly that it will never be able to enter a fifty-cent table d'hote restaurant again.
Then Cornucopia Coogan arose and gave us a few select recitations. She weighs 295 pounds and she was immense.
Just as she started to tell us that curfew would not ring to-night Uncle Peter winked at me, and we sneaked out and began to drown our sorrow.
Those musicales would be all to the good if the music didn't suffocate them.
After the crowd had left that night Peaches said