You know I don't care much for society--especially when it breaks into our bungalow and begins to scratch my furniture with its high-heeled shoes. But just to please Peaches I promised to go in the parlor and not be an insult to those present. For awhile everybody sat around and sized up what everybody else was wearing. Then they gave each other the silent double-cross. Presently my wife whispered to Miss Cleopatra Hungerschnitz, whereupon that young lady giggled her way over to the piano and began to knock its teeth out. The way Cleopatra went after one of Beethoven's sonatas and slapped its ears was pitiful. Cleopatra learned to injure a piano at a conservatory of music, and she could take a fugo by Victor Hugo and leave it for dead in about thirty-two bars. At the finish of the sonata we all applauded Cleopatra just as loudly as we could, in the hope that she would faint with surprise and stop playing, but no such luck. She tied a couple of chords together and swung that piano like a pair of Indian clubs. First she did "My Old Kentucky Home," with variations, until everybody who had a home began to weep for fear it might get to be like her Kentucky home. The variations were where she made a mistake and struck the right note. Then Cleopatra moved up to the squeaky end of the piano and gave an imitation of a Swiss music box. It sounded to me like a Swiss cheese. Presently Cleopatra ran out of raw material and subsided, while we all applauded her with our fingers crossed, and two very thoughtful ladies began to talk fast to Cleopatra so as to take her mind off the piano. Then the Bingledingle brothers, known as Oscar and Victor, opened fire on us with a couple of mandolins. Oscar and Victor play entirely by hand. They don't know one note from another, and they can prove it when they begin to play. Their mother believes them to be prodigies of genius. She is alone in her belief. After Oscar and Victor had chased one of Sousa's marches all over the parlor and finally left it unconscious under the sofa, they bowed and ceased firing, and then they went out in the dining-room and filled their storage batteries with ice cream and cake. This excitement was followed by another catastrophe named Minnehaha Jones, who picked up a couple of soprano songs and screeched them at us. Minnehaha is one of those fearless singers who vocalize without a safety valve. She always keeps her eyes closed, so she can't tell just when her audience gets up and leaves the room. The next treat was a mixed duet on the flute and trombone between Clarence Smith and Lancelot Diffenberger, with a violin obligate on the side by Hector Tompkins. Never before have I seen music so roughly handled. It looked like a walk-over for Clarence, but in the fifth round he blew a couple of green notes and Lancelot got the decision.