THERE WAS THE AWFULLEST FIGHT YOU EVER SAW.
When things got a little bit quiet, and the man who played the drum had made it up with the leader, the band began to play something on its own account. It began all right, but it didn't finish the way it was meant to finish. First one player and then another would blow a loud note in the wrong place, and the leader would hammer on his music-stand, and the people would laugh themselves 'most sick. After a while the band came to a place where the trombones seemed to get crazy, and the leader just jumped up and knocked the trombone-player down with a big horn that he snatched from another man. Then somebody hit the leader with a cornet and knocked him into the big drum, and there was the awfullest fight you ever saw till somebody turned out the gas.
There wasn't any more concert that night, and the people all got their money back, and now Mr. Travers and the leader of the band have offered a reward for "the person who maliciously altered the music"—that's what the notice says. But I wasn't malicious, and I do hope nobody will find out I did it, though I mean to tell father about it as soon as he gets over having his nose pretty near broke by trying to interfere between the trombone-player and the man with the French horn.
[OUR BABY.]
Mr. Martin has gone away. He's gone to Europe or Hartford or some such place. Anyway I hope we'll never see him again. The expressman says that part of him went in the stage and part of him was sent in a box by express, but I don't know whether it is true or not.
I never could see the use of babies. We have one at our house that belongs to mother and she thinks everything of it. I can't see anything wonderful about it. All it can do is to cry and pull hair and kick. It hasn't half the sense of my dog, and it can't even chase a cat. Mother and Sue wouldn't have a dog in the house, but they are always going on about the baby and saying "ain't it perfectly sweet!" Why, I wouldn't change Sitting Bull for a dozen babies, or at least I wouldn't change him if I had him. After the time he bit Mr. Martin's leg father said "that brute sha'n't stay here another day." I don't know what became of him, but the next morning he was gone and I have never seen him since. I have had great sorrows though people think I'm only a boy.