Mike Marble: His Crotchets and Oddities.

Transcriber's Note:
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Don't be frightened, reader, at what you see on the title-page of this book, or at the head which I have given to my first chapter. Don't let the idea creep into your head, that I am going to give you a dull and sleepy essay on music. It is not the crotchets which you find in the singing-book, that I intend to talk about; I leave them to those who know more about them than I do. There is a man of my acquaintance, whom I could hunt up without much trouble, and who, if you should ever choose to give him a chance, would talk you deaf, and write you blind, about this sort of crotchets, together with all the members of that noisy family—breves, semibreves, minims, and what not! I'll refer you to him, for all the mysteries of the gamut . Whenever you want to learn them, I assure you he would like no better fun than to teach them to you. I'll not interfere with his trade.
My business is with another family of crotchets. Webster—Noah Webster, the man who made the spelling-book, out of which Uncle Frank learned to say, or rather to drawl his letters—gives, in his large dictionary, as one of the definitions of the word crotchet , this: a peculiar turn of mind, a whim, a fancy. Here you have just that kind of crotchet that I am going to deal with. Mr. Webster could not have hit my crotchet more exactly, if he had taken aim at it on purpose. It is a peculiar turn of mind , or, if you prefer it, a whim , or a fancy , that I shall talk about, for an hour or so, perhaps longer. Indeed, I am not perfectly sure but I shall find a whole flock of whims and fancies, because, you know, birds of a feather flock together, and, in that case, I shall give you a peep at a score or two of whims and fancies.