My impression is, after many years of consideration, that there never can have been anybody in the world who played worse.

He made the most dismal sounds I have ever heard produced by any means, natural or artificial.

I don't know what the tunes were--if there were such things in the performance at all, which I doubt--but the influence of the strain upon me was, first, to make me think of all my sorrows until I could hardly keep my tears back; then to take away my appetite; and lastly, to make me so sleepy that I couldn't keep my eyes open.

They begin to close again, and I begin to nod, as the recollection rises fresh upon me.

Once more the little room, with its open corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock's feathers displayed over the mantelpiece--I remember wondering when I first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had known what his finery was doomed to come to--fades from before me, and I nod, and sleep.