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at the door, a voice from within demanded, "Who's there?" My conductor answered that it was him. But this not satisfying the querist, the voice again repeated the demand; to which he answered louder than before; and now the door was opened by an old woman with cautious reluctance.

When we were got in, he welcomed me to his house with great ceremony, and turning to the old woman, asked where was her lady? "Good troth," replied she, in a peculiar dialect, "she's washing your twa shirts at the next door, because they have taken an oath against lending out the tub any longer.""My two shirts!" cried he in a tone that faltered with confusion; "what does the idiot mean?"

"I ken what I mean weel enough," replied the other; "she's washing your twa shirts at the next door, because

"Fire and fury, no more of thy stupid explanations!" cried he; "go and inform her we have got company. Were that Scotch hag," continued he, turning to me, "to be forever in my family, she would never learn politeness, nor forget that absurd poisonous accent of hers, or testify the smallest specimen of breeding or high life; and yet it is very surprising too, as I had her from a parliament man, a friend of mine from the Highlands, one of the politest men in the world; but that's a secret."

We waited some time for Mrs. Tibbs' arrival, during which interval I had a full opportunity of surveying the chamber and all its furniture, which consisted of four chairs with old wrought bottoms, that he assured me were his wife's embroidery; a square table that had been once japanned; a cradle in one corner, a lumbering cabinet in the other; a broken shepherdess, and a mandarin5 without a head, were stuck over the chimney; and round the walls several paltry unframed pictures which, he observed, were all his own drawing.

"What do you think, sir, of that head in the corner, done in the manner of Grisoni? There's the true keeping in it; Grotesque Chinese figure.

5. mandarin.

6. Grisoni. A Florentine painter of the eighteenth century, popular for his portraits.

it's my own face, and though there happens to be no likeness, a Countess offered me an hundred for its fellow. I refused her, for hang it! that would be mechanical,' you know."

The wife at last made her appearance, at once a slattern and a coquette; much emaciated, but still carrying the remains of beauty. She made twenty apologies for being seen in such odious dishabille, but hoped to be excused, as she had stayed out all night at the gardens with the Countess, who was excessively fond of the horns. "And, indeed, my dear," added she, turning to her husband, "his lordship drank your health in a bumper."

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"Poor Jack!" cries he; "a dear good-natured creature, I know he loves me. But I hope, my dear, you have given orders for dinner; you need make no great preparations neither, there are but three of us; something elegant and little will do, a turbot, an ortolan,8 a

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"Or what do think, my dear," interrupts the wife, "of a nice pretty bit of ox-cheek, piping hot, and dressed with a little of my own sauce?"

"The very thing!" replies he; "it will eat best with some smart bottled beer: but be sure to let us have the sauce his Grace was so fond of. I hate your immense loads of meat; that is country all over; extreme disgusting to those who are in the least acquainted with high life."

By this time my curiosity began to abate, and my appetite to increase the company of fools may at first make us smile, but at last never fails of rendering us melancholy; I therefore pretended to recollect a prior engagement, and, after having shown my respect to the house, according to the fashion of the English, by giving the servant a piece of money at the door, I took my leave; Mr. Tibbs assuring me that dinner, if I stayed, would be ready at least in less than two hours.

7. mechanical.

8. turbot

Like a common workman.
ortolan.

one a fish, the other a bird.

Highly fashionable delicacies; the

CHARLES LAMB

[CHARLES LAMB was born in London, February 10, 1775, and was a resident of the city throughout his life. He was educated at Christ's Hospital, an endowed residence school for boys in poor circumstances, entering at the same time with Coleridge, who became his lifelong friend. On leaving school he went to work as a clerk, and soon found a place with the East India Company, in whose establishment he served from 1792 to 1825, when he was retired on a pension of 450 pounds. Early in life Lamb devoted himself to the care of his sister Mary, who was subject to attacks of insanity, and they lived together, neither marrying, till his death. They collaborated in writing Tales from Shakespeare, and their unaristocratic drawing-room was the center of a brilliant literary circle. In 1820 Lamb began to contribute the Elia essays to the London Magazine, in which two series (representing nearly all his best work in the essay) were eventually published (see the Introduction, page 12). Within a year after the publication of the volume called Last Essays he died, in 1834.]

I HAVE no ear.

A CHAPTER ON EARS1

Mistake me not, reader,-nor imagine that I am by nature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, hanging ornaments and (architecturally speaking) handsome volutes to the human capital. Better my mother had never borne me.-I am, I think, rather delicately than copiously provided with those conduits; and I feel no disposition to envy the mule for his

1. This essay, like most of the series, is in good part autobiographical; Lamb's indifference to music was one of his best known eccentricities. The amusing postscript to the essay, defending the personality of Elia, was written in reply to a passage in Leigh Hunt's journal, The Indicator, under date of Jan. 31, 1821: "We believe that we are taking no greater liberty with him [Lamb] than our motives will warrant, when we add that he sometimes writes in the London Magazine under the signature of Elia." Just why Lamb dubbed his friend Boldero is not known.

plenty, or the mole for her exactness, in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets-those indispensable side-intelligencers.

Neither have I incurred or done anything to incur, with Defoe,2 that hideous disfigurement, which constrained him to draw upon assurance—to feel “quite unabashed," and at ease upon that article. I was never, I thank my stars, in the pillory; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the compass of my destiny that I ever should be.

3

When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will understand me to mean-for music.-To say that this heart never melted at the concourse of sweet sounds, would be a foul self-libel.-"Water parted from the sea" never fails to move it strangely. So does "In infancy." But they were used to be sung at her harpsichord (the old-fashioned instrument in vogue in those days) by a gentlewoman-the gentlest, sure that ever merited the appellation-the sweetest-why should I hesitate to name Mrs. S-,5 once the blooming Fanny Weatherall of the Temple-who had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long coats; and to make him glow, tremble, and blush with a passion that not faintly indicated the day-spring of that absorbing sentiment, which was afterwards destined to overwhelm and subdue his nature quite, for Alice W-n.o

I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to harmony. 7 But organically I am incapable of a tune. I have been practising "God save the King" all my life; whistling and humming it over to myself in solitary corners; and am not yet

2. Defoe. The reference is to a famous but inaccurate line in Pope's Dunciad: "Earless on high stood unabashed Defce.' Defoe was imprisoned in the pillory, in 1703, for a political offense, and such offenders often had their ears clipped; but he did not.

3. concourse of sweet sounds. A Shakespearean phrase (Merchant of Venice, V, i), save that the first word should be "concord." 4. Water parted from the sea In Infancy. Songs by Dr. Arne, which Lamb heard in Artaxerxes, the first play he ever attended.

5. Mrs. S. Lamb noted that the full name was Spinkes.
See note on age 124, under the essay on

6. Alice W

-n.

Dream Children.

arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of Elia never been impeached.

I am not without suspicion that I have an undeveloped faculty of music within me. For thrumming, in my wild way, on my friend A.'s piano, the other morning, while he was engaged in an adjoining parlor,-on his return he was pleased to say he thought it could not be the maid! On his first surprise at hearing the keys touched in somewhat an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, his suspicions had lighted on Jenny. But a grace, snatched from a superior refinement, soon convinced him that some being-technically perhaps deficient, but higher informed from a principle common to all the fine arts-had swayed the keys to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less cultivated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited from them. I mention this as a proof of my friend's penetration, and not with any view of disparaging Jenny.

Scientifically I could never be made to understand (yet I have taken some pains) what a note in music is; or how one note should differ from another. Much less in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough-bass I contrive to guess at, from its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarce know what to say I am ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio stand in the like relation of obscurity to me; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as conjuring as Baralipton.10

It is hard to stand alone in an age like this (constituted to the quick and critical perception of all harmonious combinations, I verily believe, beyond all preceding ages, since Jubal11 7. quavers. Notes (strictly, eighth-notes).

8. my friend A. Doubtless Lamb's friend William Ayrton (1777-1858), a well known musical critic.

9. conjuring. Mysterious.

10. Baralipton. The symbolic name for one of the figures of the syllogism, in logic.

11. Jubal. The reputed founder of the art of music; see Genesis

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