"'_Jist_ set them four-and-twenty fiddlers to playin of something like Christian reels; hand the gals down on the floor; then I reckon there would be a little sort of a regular hand-round! Confound their jimmy simequivers, and their supple elbows! Smash me, if they don't think the whole cream of the ball lies in rattlin the bones of their elbows. Give me your long sweeping bow hands, that saws the music right in under your ribs, and sets your legs to dancin, whether they will or not. Do you think them fellers ever made anybody feel in the humour for a hand-round?' "'I can't say that I think they ever did.' "'No, nor they never will! they may set people's teeth on a wire edge, or make their flesh crawl, or set them into an ague fit with their shakin, and grindin, and squawkin. And now I think of it, the whole business sounds more like grinding ramrods in an armory, than any thing I ever come across; there's the squeakin of the wheels, that would go for them goose guzzles them fellers are pipin on. The ramrods on the grindstones will go for the fiddles,--only I don't see any fire flyin out of the catgut, but I've been watchin sharp for it some time. Then there's the old leather bellows groanin and gruntin away, jist like those two fellers seesawin there, on them two big-bellied fiddles, and the leather bands flappin every time they come round, keeps the time for the whole concern.' "'Well, have you seen any fire yet?' after a long pause. "'Yes, plenty of it! they make it fly out of my eyes, if they don't out of the catguts; confound them, I say, they keep me all the time drawin down first one eye and then another, first one corner of my mouth and then another, jist as if a horse was on a dead strain, and you were bowing your neck and stickin your leg straight in the ground, and then strainin with all your might as if you could help him; but this is worse! a confounded sight worse! for every now and then all the fiddlers and trumpeters comes rattlin down their tinklin quivers, like a four-horse load of china, goin to the devil down a steep hill at the rate of ten knots an hour; and then it all dies away agin, as if horses, wagon, and chinaware had all gone over a bank as high as a church steeple. Then! I begin to draw a long breath agin, and feel a little comfortable. But here's a dyin away sound! hop and come agin, rising and whooping, until the whole team's going full tilt, pull dick, pull devil, here they go again! old Nick take the hindmost. See their elbows now, how they move out and in, out and in, like spinning jinnies. And see that feller that sets at the top of the mob, on the high chair in the middle, how his head goes. See how he looks at that book before him, as if that stuff could be put down there in black and white.'