Bernard Capes

“ My grandfather blew his 'dog's-nose,' and drank his clarinet like a artist and my father—"
"What did you say your grandfather did?" asked the piccolo.
"He played the clarinet."
"You said he blew his 'dog's-nose.'"
"Don't be a ass, Fred!" said the banjo, aggrieved. "How the blazes could a man blow his dog's nose, unless he muzzled it with a handkercher, and then twisted its tail? He played the clarinet, I say; and my father played the musical glasses, which was a form of harmony pertiklerly genial to him. Amongst us we've piped out a good long century—ah! ”

“ He was an enormous, tun-bellied person—a mere mound of expressionless flesh, whose size alone was an investment that paid a perpetual dividend of laughter. When, as with the rest of his company, his face was blackened, it looked like a specimen coal on a pedestal in a museum. ”

“ Then the devil has been misjudged these eighteen hundred and ninety odd years."
"But did you ever see a ghost?" said the little grinning man, pursuing his subject.
"No, I didn't, sir," mimicked the banjo, "saving in coffee grounds. But my grandfather in his cups see'd one; which brings us to number three in the matter of heredity."
"Give us the story, Jack," said the "bones," whose agued shins were extemporizing a rattle on their own account before the fire.
"Well, I don't mind," said the fat man. "It's seasonable; and I'm seasonable, like the blessed plum-pudden, I am ”