Southern shield., 1860-01-28
MY WIPES PIANO.

The deed is accomplished. My wife
 has got piano, and now farewell the tranquil mind-farewell content and the evening papers, and the big cigars that make ambition virtue, oh, farewell !-
 And, oh, ye mortal engines whose rude throats the immortal Joye's dread clamors counterfeit" But stop, can't bid them farewell. for one of them has just arrived. It came on a dray. Six men carried it into the parlor, and it grunted awfully.
 1t weighs ton, shines like mirror, and has carved Cupid's climbing up it's limbs. And such lungs-whew My wife has commenced to practice, and the first time she touched the machine, I thought we were Ill the midst of thunder storm, and the lightning had struck the crockery chest. The cat, with tail erect, took bee line for particular friend upon the back fence, dem 2lishing six shilling pane of glass. The baby awoke, and the little fellow tried his best to beat the in- strument, but he couldn't do it. It beat hlm A teacher has been introduced into the honse. He says he is the last of Ma poleon's grand army. He wears a huge mustache, looks at'me fercely, smells of garlic, and goes by the name of Count Kunawayandneverc comebackagainsky. He played an extract de opera the other night. lie run his fingers through his hair twice, then grinned, then he cooked his eyes up at the ceiling, like monkey hunting flies, and then came down one of his fin gers, and heard a delightful sound, sim lar to that produced by a cockroach dan- cling upon the tenor string of fiddle. Down came another finger, and l was re- minded of the wind whistling through knot hole in a hen coop. He touched his thumb, and 1 thought that was in an orchard listening to the praying of dis tant jackass. Now he ran his fingers along the keys, and I thought of a boy rattling stick upon a picket fence. All of sudden he stopped, and I thought something had happened. Then came down both fists, and oh, Lord such noise was never heard before. I thought hurricane had struck the house. and the walls were caving in. l imagined I was in the cellar, and ton of coal was falling upon my head. thought the machine had bursted, when the internal noise stop- ped, and heard my wife eiaculate:
 Exquisite!" What the deuce is the matter?" The answer was, "Why, dear, that's La Somnambula "D-n Som nambula!" thought I; and the Count rolled up his sheet of paper. He calls it music but for the life of me, I can't | make it look like anything else than rail fence with a lot of juvenile niggers climbing over. Before that instrument | of torture came into the house, could | enjoy myself. but now every darned wo- man in the neighborhood must be invited | to hear the new piano, and every time the blasted thing shrieks out like a locomo- tive with the bronchitis, I have to praise it's tone, and when the invited guests are playing, 1 have to say, Exquisite!" " Delightful" /" " Heavenly" and all such trash, while at the same time know just as much about music as blind codfsh. There are more tuning hammers than comforts in our house, and-and I wish the inventor of the piano was troubled with perpetual nightmare, and obliged to sleep in one of his instruments all his life. As for myself, had rather put my head under tin pan and be drummed to sleep with pair of smoothing irons than hear " La Somnambula," or any other La thumped out of a piano.