remarkable exhibition of stubbornness. When the violins and the
'cellos, the hautboys and the flutes, the cornets and the trombones,
said "Come, let us work together in G minor," or "Let us do this
passage in B flat," the bassoon would lead off with a wild shriek in D
sharp or some other foreign key, and maintain it so lustily that the
other instruments--e. g., the violins, the 'cellos, the hautboys, and
all--were compelled to back, switch, and wheel into the bassoon's lead
as best they could.

But no sooner had they come into harmony than the bassoon--oh,
melancholy perversity of that instrument--would strike off into another
key with a ribald snicker or coarse guffaw, causing more turbulence and
another stampede. And this preposterous condition of affairs was kept
up the whole evening, the bassoon seeming to take a fiendish delight in
his riotous, brutal conduct.

At first Aurora was mortified; then her mortification deepened into
chagrin. In the hope of touching his heart she bestowed upon him a
look of such tender supplication that, had he not been the most callous
creature in the world, he must have melted under it. To his eternal
shame, let it be said, the bassoon remained as impervious to her
beseeching glances as if he had been a sphinx or a rhinoceros. In
fact, Aurora's supplicating eyes seemed to instigate him to further and
greater madness, for after that he became still more riotous, and at
many times during the evening the crisis in the orchestra threatened
anarchy and general disintegration.

Aurora's humiliation can be imagined by those only who have experienced
a like bitterness--the bitterness of awakening to a realization of the
cruelty of love. Aurora loved the bassoon tenderly, deeply,
absorbingly. The sprightliness of his lighter moods, no less than the
throbbing pathos of his sadder moments, had won her heart. She had
given him her love unreservedly, she fairly worshipped him, and now she
awakened, as it were, from a golden dream, to find her idol clay! It
was very sad. Yet who that has loved either man or bassoon does not
know this bitterness?

"He will be gentler hereafter," said Aunt Eliza, encouragingly. "You
must always remember that we should be charitable and indulgent with
those we love. Who knows why the bassoon was harsh and wayward and
imperious to-night? Let us not judge him till we have heard the whys
and wherefores. He may have been ill; depend upon it, my dear, he