You see Josiah hated music anyway, only the very softest, lowest kind; and Peter’ses wuz powerful—powerful and continuous.
But I reminded Josiah Allen in the cause of duty that he had complained that the house wuz too still sence Melinda Ann had come, and he wanted a noise.
“I never wanted to be in a Lunatick Asylum,” sez he; “I didn’t hanker for Bedlam,” he yelled.
Wall, suffice it to say that I never got a wink of sleep till past midnight. And mebby it wuz about one o’clock, when all of a sudden we wuz all waked up by a low, rumblin’ noise, strange and weird.
My first thought was a earthquake, and then a cyclone.
But Josiah Allen had waked up first and got his senses before I did, and sez he:
“It is that dumb fool a playin’ on a base viol.”
And that wuz what it proved to be. He had got lonesome in the night, and got up and onpacked the base viol, and wuz playin’ a low, mournful piece on it, so’s not to wake us up.
He said in the mornin’ that he held it in for that purpose.
He is a good-natured creeter, and a mourner, there hain’t no doubt on’t, and so I told Josiah.