Sam was certainly more obliging than another member of the company, the 'mottled-faced' gentleman, who, when asked to sing, sturdily and somewhat offensively declined to do so. We also find references to other crusty individuals who flatly refuse to exercise their talents, as, for instance, after the accident to the coach which was conveying Nicholas Nickleby and Squeers to Yorkshire. In response to the call for a song to pass the time away, some protest they cannot, others wish they could, others can do nothing without the book, while the 'very fastidious lady entirely ignored the invitation to give them some little Italian thing out of the last opera.' A somewhat original plea for refusing to sing when asked is given by the chairman of the musical gathering at the Magpie and Stump (_P.P._). When asked why he won't enliven the company he replies, 'I only know one song, and I have sung it already, and it's a fine of glasses round to sing the same song twice in one night.' Doubtless he was deeply thankful to Mr. Pickwick for changing the subject. At another gathering of a similar nature, we are told about a man who knew a song of seven verses, but he couldn't recall them at the moment, so he sang the first verse seven times. There is no record as to what the comic duets were that Sam Weller and Bob Sawyer sang in the dickey of the coach that was taking the party to Birmingham, and this suggests what a number of singers of all kinds are referred to, though no mention is made of their songs. What was Little Nell's repertoire? It must have been an extensive one according to the man in the boat (_O.C.S._ 43). 'You've got a very pretty voice' ... said this gentleman ... 'Let me hear a song this minute.' 'I don't think I know one, sir,' returned Nell. 'You know forty-seven songs,' said the man, with a gravity which admitted of no altercation on the subject. 'Forty-seven's your number.' And so the poor little maid had to keep her rough companions in good humour all through the night. Then Tiny Tim had a song about a lost child travelling in the snow; the miner sang a Christmas song--'it had been a very old song when he was a boy,' while the man in the lighthouse (_C.C._) consoled himself in his solitude with a 'sturdy' ditty. What was John Browdie's north-country song? (_N.N._). All we are told is that he took some time to consider the words, in which operation his wife assisted him, and then began to roar a meek sentiment (supposed to be uttered by a gentle swain fast pining away with love and despair) in a voice of thunder. The Miss Pecksniffs used to come singing into the room, but their songs are unrecorded, as well as those that Florence Dombey used to sing to Paul, to his great delight. What was the song Miss Mills sang to David Copperfield and Dora about the slumbering echoes in the cavern of Memory; as if she was a hundred years old.