It continued its assaults, sometimes by the way of the naturals, sometimes by the way of the sharps, and sometimes by a zigzag through both; but all its attempts to dislodge the right from its stronghold proving ineffectual, it came close up to its adversary, and expired.
Any one, or rather no one, can imagine what kind of noises the piano gave forth during the conflict. Certain it is, no one can describe them, and, therefore, I shall not attempt it. The battle ended, Miss Augusta moved as though she would have arisen, but this was protested against by a number of voices at once.
“One song, my dear Aurelia,” said Miss Small; “you must sing that sweet little French air you used to sing in Philadelphia, and which Madame Piggisqueaki was so fond of.”
Miss Augusta looked pitifully at her mamma, and her mamma looked “sing” at Miss Augusta; accordingly, she squared herself for a song.
“SOME VERY CURIOUS SOUNDS, WHICH APPEARED TO PROCEED FROM
THE LIPS OF MISS AUGUSTA.”
She brought her hands to the campus this time in fine style, and they seemed now to be perfectly reconciled to each other. They commenced a kind of colloquy; the right whispering treble very softly, and the left responding bass very loudly. The conference had been kept up until I began to desire a change of the subject, when my ear caught, indistinctly, some very curious sounds, which appeared to proceed from the lips of Miss Augusta; they seemed to be compounded of a dry cough, a grunt, a hiccough, and a whisper; and they were introduced, it appeared to me, as interpreters between the right and the left.
Things progressed in this way for about the space of fifteen seconds, when I happened to direct my attention to Mr. Jenkins, from Philadelphia. His eyes were closed, his head rolled gracefully from side to side; a beam of heavenly complacency rested upon his countenance; and his whole man gave irresistible demonstration that Miss Crump’s music made him feel good all over. I had just turned from the contemplation of Mr. Jenkins’ transports, to see whether I could extract from the performance anything intelligible, when Miss Crump made a fly-catching grab at half-a-dozen keys in a row and at the same instant she fetched a long, dunghill-cock crow, at the conclusion of which she grabbed as many keys with her left. This came over Jenkins like a warm bath, and over me like a rake of bamboo briers.
My nerves had not recovered from this shock before Miss Augusta repeated the movement, and accompanied it with a squall of a pinched cat. This threw me into an ague fit; but, from respect to the performer, I maintained my position.
She now made a third grasp with the right, boxed the faces of six keys in a row with the left, and at the same time raised one of the most unearthly howls that ever issued from the throat of a human being. This seemed the signal for universal uproar and destruction. She now threw away all her reserve, and charged the piano with her whole force. She boxed it, she clawed it, she raked it, she scraped it. Her neck-vein swelled, her chin flew up, her face flushed, her eye glared, her bosom heaved; she screamed, she howled, she yelled, cackled, and was in the act of dwelling upon the note of a screech-owl, when I took the St. Vitus’s dance, and rushed out of the room. “Good Lord,” said a bystander, “if this be her singing, what must her crying be!” As I reached the door I heard a voice exclaim, “By heavens! she’s the most enchanting performer I ever heard in my life!” I turned to see who was the author of this ill-timed compliment, and who should it be but Nick Truck, from Lincoln, who seven years before was dancing “Possum up the Gumtree” in the chimney-corner of his father’s kitchen. Nick had entered the counting-room of a merchant in Charleston some five or six years before, had been sent out as supercargo of a vessel to Bordeaux, and while the vessel was delivering one cargo and taking in another, had contracted a wonderful relish for French music.