as he came bustling out
to see who 'played music on his property before breakfast.'

The little fiddle commonly known as a 'kit' that dancing-masters
used to carry in their capacious tail coat pockets was much more
in evidence in the middle of last century than it is now. Caddy
Jellyby (_B.H._), after her marriage to a dancing-master,
found a knowledge of the piano and the kit essential, and so
she used to practise them assiduously. When Sampson Brass
hears Kit's name for the first time he says to Swiveller:

'Strange name--name of a dancing-master's fiddle,
eh, Mr. Richard?'

We must not forget the story of a fine young Irish gentleman,
as told by the one-eyed bagman to Mr. Pickwick and his friends,
who,

being asked if he could play the fiddle, replied he
had no doubt he could, but he couldn't exactly say
for certain, because he had never tried.

_Violoncello_

Mr. Morfin (_D. & S._), 'a cheerful-looking, hazel-eyed elderly
bachelor,' was

a great musical amateur--in his way--after business,
and had a paternal affection for his violoncello, which
was once in every week transported from Islington,
his place of abode, to a certain club-room hard by
the Bank, where quartets of the most tormenting and
excruciating nature were executed every Wednesday
evening by a private party.

His habit of humming his musical recollections of these
evenings was a source of great annoyance to Mr. James Carker,
who devoutly wished 'that he would make a bonfire of his
violoncello, and burn his books with it.' There was only a thin
partition between the rooms which these two gentlemen occupied,
and on another occasion Mr. Morfin performed an extraordinary
feat in order to warn the manager of his presence.

I have whistled, hummed tunes, gone accurately through
the whole of Beethoven's Sonata in B, to let him know
that I was within hearing, but he never heeded me.

This particular sonata has not hitherto been identified.

It is comforting to know that the fall of the House of Dombey
made no difference to Mr. Morfin, who continued to solace
himself by producing 'the most dismal and forlorn sounds
out of his violoncello before going to bed,' a proceeding
which had no effect on his deaf landlady, beyond producing
'a sensation of something rumbling in her bones.'

Nor were the quartet parties interfered with. They came round
regularly, his violoncello was in good t