He had changed his tune again. He hop-light ladies and tip-toed fine from end to end of the key-board. He played
soft and low and solemn. I heard the church-bells over the hills. The candles of heaven was lit, one by one I saw the stars rise. The great organ of eternity began to play from the world’s end to the world’s end, and all the angels went to prayers. * * * Then the music changed to water; full of feeling that couldn’t be thought, and began to drop—drip, drop—drip, drop, clear and sweet, like tears of joy falling into a lake of glory. It was sweeter than that. It was as sweet as a sweetheart sweetened with white sugar mixt with powdered silver and seed diamonds. It was too sweet. I tell you the audience cheered. Rubin he kinder bowed like he wanted to say, “Much obleeged, but I’d rather you wouldn’t interrup’ me.”
He stopt a moment or two to ketch breath. Then he got mad. He run his fingers through his hair, he shoved up his sleeves, he opened his coat-tails a leetle further, he drug up his stool, he leaned over, and, sir, he just went for that old pianner. He slapt her face, he boxed her jaws, he pulled her nose, he pinched her ears, and he scratched her cheeks, until she fairly yelled. He knockt her down, and he stampt on her shameful. She bellowed, she bleated like a calf, she howled like a hound, she squealed like a pig, she shrieked like a rat, and then he wouldn’t let her up. He ran a quarter-stretch down the low grounds of the base, till he got clean in the bowels of the earth, and you heard thunder galloping after thunder, through the hollows and caves of perdition, and then he fox-chased his right hand with his left till he got way out of the treble into the clouds, whar the notes was finer than the pints of cambric needles, and you couldn’t hear nothin’ but the shadders of ’em. And then he wouldn’t let the old pianner go. He for’ard two’d, he crost over first gentleman, he chassade right and left, back to your places, he all hands’d
aroun’ ladies to the right, promenade all, in and out, here and there, back and forth, up and down, perpetual motion, double twisted and turned and tacked and tangled into forty eleven thousand double bow knots.
By jinks! it was a mixtery. And then he wouldn’t let the old pianner go. He fecht up his right wing, he fecht up his left wing, he fecht up his centre, he fecht up his reserves. He fired by file, he fired by platoons, by company, by regiments, and by brigades. He opened his cannon—siege guns down thar, Napoleons here, twelve-pounders yonder—big guns, little guns, middle-sized guns, round shot, shells, shrapnels, grape, canister, mortar, mines, and magazines, every livin’ battery and bomb a-goin’ at the same time. The house trembled, the lights danced, the walls shuk, the floor come up, the ceilin’ come down, the sky split, the ground rokt—heavens and earth, creation, sweet potatoes, Moses, ninepences, glory, tenpenny nails, Sampson in a ’simmon tree, Tump Tompson in a tumbler-cart, roodle-oodle-oodle-oodle—ruddle-uddle-uddle-uddle—raddle-addle-addle-addle—riddle-iddle-iddle-iddle—reedle-eedle-eedle-eedle—p-r-r-r-r-r-lang! Bang!!!! lang! per-lang! p-r-r-r-r-r! Bang!!!
With that bang! he lifted himself bodily into the air, and he come down with his knees, his ten fingers, his ten toes, his elbows, and his nose, striking every single, solitary key on the pianner at the same time. The thing busted, and went off into seventeen hundred and fifty-seven thousand five hundred and forty-two hemi-demi-semi-quivers, and I know’d no mo’.
When I come to, I were under ground about twenty foot, in a place they call Oyster Bay, a-treatin’ a Yankee that I never laid eyes on before, and never expect to again. Day was br’akin’ by the time I got to the St. Nicholas Hotel, and I
pledge you my word I did not know my name. The man asked me the number of my room, and I told him, “Hot music on the half-shell for two!”
Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii.
Adapted from Helen Potter’s rendering, by Frances E. Peirce.