"Better play cornet, too, Cooney," says Ad Smith, whirling around. "You've got enough mouth for both."
"Well, we ought to have a cornetist," says Cooney, "it's what we've needed for years."
This riles the scrub cornet player, whoever he happens to be, and he gets up excitedly. "We'd get along a lot better without one or two human calliopes—" he begins.
"Set down, set down," says old Dobbs from the coils of his tuba. "Let 'em fight. They know it all between pieces—"
"Who asked you to horn in?" says Ed Smith, getting up preparatory to going home with his baritone horn and leaving a broken and forlorn world to grieve his loss.
Of course this is a crisis. But we never bust up. The Paynesville Band busts up about twice a year over the division of profits and the color of their new uniforms and the old question of whether the cornets or trombones shall march in front. But we never go entirely to pieces. This is largely because of Sam Green. He is our peacemaker and most faithful player. He has played second alto in the band for thirty-five years without a promotion, and is by all odds the worst player I ever saw, being only entirely at home in the key of C; and he can't play three-four time to save his soul. But his devotion is marvelous. He is always the first man down to practice. He lights the lamps, builds the fires, and when necessary goes out to Ed Smith's home and persuades him to come back into the band for just this night. And whenever the dispute between the factions gets to the point where Ed Smith begins gathering up his doll things, Sam interferes.
"Come on now, boys," he pleads, "we've got to get this piece worked up. You're all good players. Why, if Paynesville had you fellows, she'd have a band. That was my fault that time. I'll get this here thing right sometime. I'll sit out in the trio now and you fellows take it."
And pretty soon, as he argues, Ed's proud heart softens, and he comes back with a glare at Cooney. Then Sim Askinson raps on his music rack and says: "Gentlemen and trombone players," as he has for a quarter of a century; and a minute later the band is tumbling eagerly through its piece once more, all feuds suspended in the desperate effort to come out even at the end with no surplus bars to be played by some floundering horn.
Some time during the evening, as a rule, the various sections get together on some passage and swim grandly through, every horn in perfect time, and the parts blending like Mocha and Java. All differences are forgotten, and the band breaks up with friendly words, Ed Smith and Cooney going home together. Music has charms to soothe the savage beast, and it also has a wonderful power of taking the temper out of the grocer and the painter and the mahout of the waterwork's gasoline engine.
I never stepped so high or felt so grand as I did the first time I marched out with the boys and went down the street in the back row of the band next to the drums, a member in good standing, and dodging every time I passed under a telephone wire to keep from scraping my cap off. I never expect to feel that grand again. But I have an ambition. If ever I should become so famous and successful that when I went back to Homeburg to visit my proud and happy parents and stepped off of the 4:11 train, I would find the Homeburg Marine Band there to meet me, I would know that I had made good, and I would be content. The only thing that encourages me in my ambition is that the band didn't come down to play when I went away. Do you know, Jim, it's the funniest thing—the fellows we played out-of-town in a blaze of glory never happened to be the chaps we came down to the train to meet afterward, somehow. But I imagine we weren't the only poor guessers in the world.