The spirit of democracy. [volume] (Woodsfield, Ohio) 1844-1994, 1856-04-30
The beauties of Piano Music.

The deed is accomplished. My wife
has got piano, and now farewell the
tranquil mind-farewel content and the
evening papers and the big cigars, that
make ambition virtue-oh farewell! ye
mortal engines, whose rude throats the
immortal Jove's dead clamors counterfeit;
but stop, 1 can't bid them farewell, for
one of them has just arrived. 1t came on
a dray. Six men carried it into the par
lor, and it grunted awfully. It weighs
a ton, shines like a mirror, and has car
we'd Cupids climbing up its limbs. And
such lungs--whew! My wife has commen-
ced to practice, and the frst time she
touched the machine thought we were
in the midst of thunder storm, and the
tightening had struck the croekery chest.
The cat, with tail erect, took a bee line
for particular friend on the back fence,
demolishing a slx-shilling pane of glass.
The baby awoke, and the little fellow tri-
ed his best to beat the instrument, but he
didp't do tit beat him.
A teacher has been introduced into the
house. He says he is the last of Ma
poleon's grand army He wears huge
moustache, looks at me fercely, smells of
garlic, and goes by the name of Count
Runaway y-ana-neye comeback again-by
He played ain extract de opera the other
night. He ran his fingers through his hair
twice, then grinned, then he cooked his
eyes up at the ceiling, like monkey hun
ting flies, then down came one Of his fin
gers, and heard delightful sound, SIM
liar to that produced by crockroach dan
cling upon the tenor string of fiddle.
Down came another finger, and was re-
minded of the wind whistling through a
knot hole in a hen coop. He touched his
thumb, and thought was in an orchard
listening to the distant braying of a
iackass. Now he ran his fingers along
the keys, and l thought of a boy rattling
a stick upon picket fence. All of a
sudden he stopped, and I thought some
thing had happened. Then came down
both fists, and oh, Lord! such noise was
never heard before.
I thought Il hurricane had struck the
house, and the walls were caving in.
imagined / was in the cellar, and ton
of coal was falling upon my head. /
thought the machine had burst, when the
Internal noise stopped, and / heard my
wife calculate:
"Equisite!' s
"What the deuce is the matter?n
The answer was
why, dear. that's La Somnanbula!'
Dbl Somnambula!' though /, and
the Count rolled up his sheet of paper.
He calls it music; but for the life of me,
can't make it look like anything else than
a rail fence with lot of juvenile niggers
climbing oyerit. Before that instrument
of torture came into the house, l could
enjoy myself, but now every learned wo-
men in the neighborhood must be invited
to hear the new piano, and every time the
blasted thing shrieked out like a locomo-
tive with the bronchitis, have to praise
its tone, and when the invited guests are
playing have to say, 'Exquisite!' delight
full heavenly and all such trash while, at
the same time ] know just as much about
music as blind Goldfish. There are
more tuning hammers than comforts in
our house, and-and / wish the inventor
of the piano was troubled with perpetual
nightmare, and obliged to sleep in one of
his instruments all his life. e..
AS for myself, / had rather put my
head under tin pan and be drummed to
sleep with a pair of shooting irons than
hear La Somnambula,' or any other
La thumped out of the piano. Scatter
pennies in front of my house, and draw
all the wandering fninstrels in the city
hand organs, banjos, fddies, tamborines,
rafting bones, and fish horns, Letjnvenile
monkeys crawl in at my windows in search
of three cent pieces-let me be awakened
at midnight by the cry Of rder!'-ring
the fire bells and have devil of a time gen.
erally-do all this, and willnot complain,
but Danish the pianos! Mine has got to
co. 1 am going to launch the Internal
machine out of the window the first dark
night. and, my friends, advise you to
sleep with cotton in your ears, or when
she gives her dying grunt you'll think you've
fallen out of bed or fallen star has gone
to roost upon your housetop. For the
information of Young America / will
state that all the pieces of brass wire and
ivory keys they are welcome to, but the
skeleton want for refrigerator.
= % t-------- Z 3
4.s1lsel Memory of Magpie.
i A lady who caught her magpie stealing
her picked walnuts, threw a basin of hot
grease over the poor bird, aexclaiming:
4Oh, you thief you've been at the pick.