Love of music was not one of the Honorable William Linder’s attributes. An irascible temper was. Of all instruments the B-flat trombone possesses the most nerve-jarring tone. The master of the mansion leaped from his restful chair. Where his feet had ornamented the coping his face now appeared. Far out he leaned, and roared at the musician below. The brass throat blared back at him, while the soloist, his eyes closed in the ecstasy of art, brought the “verse” part of his selection to an excruciating conclusion, half a tone below pitch. Before the chorus there was a brief pause for effect. In this pause, from Mr. Linder’s open face a voice fell like a falling star. Although it did not cry “Excelsior,” its output of vocables might have been mistaken, by a casual ear, for that clarion call. What the Honorable Mr. Linder actually shouted was: “Getthehelloutofhere!” The performer upturned a mild and vacant face. “What you say?” he inquired in a softly Teutonic accent. The Honorable William Linder made urgent gestures, like a brakeman. “Go away! Move on!” The musician smiled reassuringly. “I got already paid for this,” he explained. Up went the brass to his lips again. The tonal stairway which leads up to the chorus of _Egypt_ rose in rasping wailfulness. It culminated in an excessive, unendurable, brazen shriek—and the Honorable William Linder experienced upon the undefended rear of his person the most violent kick of a lifetime not always devoted to the arts of peace. It projected him clear of the window-sill. His last sensible vision was the face of the musician, the mouth absurdly hollow and pursed above the suddenly removed mouthpiece. Then an awning intercepted the politician’s flight. He passed through this, penetrated a second and similar stretch of canvas shading the next window below, and lay placid on his own front steps with three ribs caved in and a variegated fracture of the collar-bone. By the time the descent was ended the German musician had tucked his brass under his arm and was hurrying, in panic, down the street, his ears still ringing with the concussion which had blown the angry householder from his own front window. He was intercepted by a running policeman. “Where was the explosion?” demanded the officer. “Explosion? I hear a noise in the larch house on the corner,” replied the musician dully. The policeman grabbed his arm. “Come along back. You fer a witness! Come on; you an’ yer horn.” “It iss not a horn,” explained the German patiently, “it iss a B-flat trombone.”