I think there’s more git-up and ginger in a fife and drum,” said Uncle Lysimachus Buck. He had cocked his ear to listen. Then he held his cane beside his lips and fingered imaginary stops.
The windows of Hobbs’s hall, across the street from Asa Brickett’s store, shed their yellow gleams out upon the crisp winter night. A band rehearsal was going on there. The loafers who hovered about the stove in the store could hear the voice of the leader haranguing his men, then the robust attack on the tune—bass horns bellowing “oomp-pah oomps,” cornets blaring and clarinets wailing; then the false note, the wavering in the melody and the sharp command of a voice, at which the music shredded out into jargon and ceased. More harangue and away they all went again from the start!
“If the dummed calves ever git so they can play a whole piece to once it will be wuth while list’nin’,” growled Marriner Amazeen, settling down once more to his whittling, after he had cocked his ear for a time.
“Near’s I can find out, Hime ain’t lettin’ ’em practise nothin’ but them high-diddle-diddle circus tunes,” observed Uncle Buck. “Now, you take a fife and drum in ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me,’ or a good fiddler in ‘The Devil’s Dream’ or ‘Miss McCloud’s Reel,’ or even an accordion in ‘Alice, Where Be Ye?’ and, by swanny, you’ve got the real old ear-ticklers. But this squeaky-weaky, biff, bang, boom stuff ain’t music no more’n poundin’ on a tin wash-boiler is.”
But when Brickett began knocking a soap box into pieces for firewood, Uncle Buck bawled at him angrily.
“Band tootlin’ don’t keep me warm,” said Brickett, as he stuffed the fuel into the stove. “Any time my system of runnin’ things in this store don’t suit the loafers, said loafers know what they can do.”
“Ain’t no need of goin’ ’round makin’ noise jest for the sake of makin’ it,” replied Buck.
“Then you whistle whilst I pound boxes,” said the storekeeper, grinning, “and p’raps it’ll remind you of a fife and drum.”
“Shet up a little while, won’t ye, now?” asked Micajah Dunham, wistfully. “Here I drive clear in from my place on band-practisin’ nights so’s to git a little music, and you run your clack so that a feller can’t hear.” He sat on the edge of a box, his purchases heaped in his lap, his fur cap on the floor in order that the earlappers might not obstruct his hearing. “Here’s a piece now that they play well,” he added, with the air of conviction of one who had followed faithfully the work of the new Palermo band.
The men around the stove listened, Uncle Buck tapping his cane appreciatively.