He had been in that place six nights a week for many years, but had never been observed to raise his eyes above his music-book.... The carpenters had a joke that he was dead without being aware of it. At the theatre he had no part in what was going on except the part written for the clarionet. In his young days his house had been the resort of singers and players. When the fortunes of the family changed his clarionet was taken away from him, on the ground that it was a 'low instrument.' It was subsequently restored to him, but he never played it again. Of quite a different stamp was one of the characters in _Going into Society_, who played the clarionet in a band at a Wild Beast Show, and played it all wrong. He was somewhat eccentric in dress, as he had on 'a white Roman shirt and a bishop's mitre covered with leopard skin.' We are told nothing about him, except that he refused to know his old friends. In his story of the _Seven Poor Travellers_ Dickens found the clarionet-player of the Rochester Waits so communicative that he accompanied the party across an open green called the Vines, and assisted--in the French sense--at the performance of two waltzes, two polkas, and three Irish melodies. _Bassoon_ A notable bassoon player was Mr. Bagnet, who had a voice somewhat resembling his instrument. The ex-artilleryman kept a little music shop in a street near the Elephant and Castle. There were a few fiddles in the window, and some Pan's pipes and a tambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated scraps of music. It was to this shop that Bucket the detective came under the pretence of wanting a second-hand 'wiolinceller' (see p. 29). In the course of conversation it turns out that Master Bagnet (otherwise 'Woolwich') 'plays the fife beautiful,' and he performs some popular airs for the benefit of his audience. Mr. Bucket also claims to have played the fife himself when a boy, 'not in a scientific way, but by ear.' _Bagpipes_ Two references to the bagpipes deserve notice. One is in _David Copperfield_, where the novelist refers to his own early experiences as a shorthand reporter. He has no high opinion of the speeches he used to take down. One joyful night, therefore, I noted down the music of the parliamentary bagpipes for the last time, and I have never heard it since; though I still recognize the old drone in the newspapers. In _O.M.F._ (II.) we read of Charley Hexam's fellow pupils keeping themselves awake by maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. The peculiar subdued noise caused by a lot of children in a school is certainly suggestive of the instrument. _Trombone_