One day I heard voices in the choir beneath. I knew, before I saw the speakers reflected from the mirror in front of me, that they were two limp figures in blue serge and coal-scuttle bonnets. The strident tones were unmistakeable, the product, in so far as the human throat can compass it, of a long and careful assimilation of the clash of the cymbals. “A rare fine buildin’, this,” said one, “and what a hinstrument! I only wish we ’ad it in our place; draw a sight better than drums and cymbals, wouldn’t it? And a deal noisier.” “You’re right,” answered the other, “but, for all that, I wouldn’t exchange with that lot to get it. They deans and chapters and canons, and heaven knows what they calls theirselves, aye, and the bisshup hisself, is that sunk in ignorance and self-conceit that they can’t see the right way; no, nor never will.” Occasionally, but very rarely, matters went wrong in our own department. The water that fed the hydraulic gear failed, or was cut off at the main, and the organ “went out” in the middle of an anthem. One afternoon in November it clouded over so suddenly that we could hardly see our faces in the organ loft. Worse luck still, the matches were damp, and till I could be back with some more, Dr. H. had to guess at the anthem as best he could. I am not musician enough to know how he surmounted the difficulty, but I suspect that the choir that day must have been treated to an amount of improvisation to which they were wholly unaccustomed from an organist who, as a rule, played what he had to play, and rarely indulged in vagaries. But our worst disaster was of earlier date. Bildad the Shuhite blew the organ. He had received that name because he cleaned shoes in a corner of the Close. It was in prehistoric days before hydraulic gear was dreamed of in connexion with the organ. As luck would have it, Bildad fell sick, and had to supply a deputy at the last moment. Dr. H. studied the man carefully, mistrusting, I think, his intelligence. But his answers were satisfactory, though I thought with the Doctor that he protested too much. Anyhow, the service was due, and we had no time to waste on our fears. The singing began, but the organ was irresponsive, and, hurrying to the back of the loft, I found our deputy-blower contemplating with blank stolidity the mechanism at his command, and pleading with an injured air, “Sir, I am a’ waitin’ for you to begin!” One day I was laboriously extracting discords from the great instrument with Dr. H. at my elbow, when a gentle voice at our side asked for permission to try the instrument. What a delight it was, after the horrors I had been perpetrating, to see the long fingers charm out the melody, till they drifted at last into the chords of Chopin’s great march. Surely, I thought, the composer must hear and welcome such a perfect realisation of his wondrous dream.