Beg pardon, sir, thought you were going; not as I wants you to, for company's werry pleasant when you're stretched on your back and can't help yourself. Since I've been a-lying here I've been reckoning things up, and I've come to the conclusion as the world's got too full. People lives too fast, and do what you will, puff and blow and race after 'em, ten to one you gets beat. Everything wants to be noo and superior, says the people, and nothing old goes down. Look at them happy times, when one could take the missus in the barrer with a sackful o' cokynuts and pincushions, and them apples and lemons as the more you opened the more come out; then there'd be the sticks, and a tin kettle, and just a few odds and ends, and all drawn by the donkey; when off we'd go down to some country fair or the races; dig the holes or have bags of earth, stick up the things--cokynuts or cushions; the wife sees to the fire and kittle, and you shouts out--leastways, I don't mean you, I mean me, you know--shouts out, "Three throws a penny," when the chuckle-headed bumpkins would go on throwing away like winkin' till they knocked something down, and then go off all on the smile to think how clever they'd been. But now they must have their Aunt Sallys and stuff, and country fairs has all gone to the bow-wows. If I gets better I'm a-goin' to turn Punch from a mellowdramy into a opera--make 'em sing everything, you know. I'd have tried it on afore only my mate gets so orrid short-winded with the pipes, and often when you're a-expectin' the high notes of a toone he drops it off altogether, and fills in with larrups of the drum, and that wouldn't do you know in the sollum parts. Them music-halls has done us as much harm as any-think, and pretty places they is; why if it warn't for the pretty toons as they fits on the songs, nobody wouldn't stop to hear the rubbidge as is let off. Punch _is_ stoopid sometimes, we know, but then look at the moral. And there ain't no moral at all in music-hall songs. Sometimes I think as I shall have to knock off the national drammy in consequence of want of funds, for you know times may turn so hard that I shall have to sell all off, and the drum mayn't come back, though I was thinking one time of me and pardner taking a hinstrument each and practisin' up some good dooets--me taking the drum and him the pipes, allus allowing, of course, as the drum do come back. But then you see as his short-windedness would be agen us, and it wouldn't do to be allus drowning the high parts with so much leathering.