anyway, you could learn to smoke yourself."

"But my principles, Luigi, you forget my principles. You would not have
me do a thing which I regard as a sin?"

"Oh, bosh!"

The conversation ceased again, for Angelo was sick and discouraged and
strangling; but after some time he closed his book and asked Luigi to
sing "From Greenland's Icy Mountains" with him, but he would not,
and when he tried to sing by himself Luigi did his best to drown
his plaintive tenor with a rude and rollicking song delivered in a
thundering bass.

After the singing there was silence, and neither brother was happy.
Before blowing the light out Luigi swallowed half a tumbler of whisky,
and Angelo, whose sensitive organization could not endure intoxicants of
any kind, took a pill to keep it from giving him the headache.

CHAPTER II. MA COOPER GETS ALL MIXED UP

The family sat in the breakfast-room waiting for the twins to come down.
The widow was quiet, the daughter was alive with happy excitement. She
said:

"Ah, they're a boon, ma, just a boon! Don't you think so?"

"Laws, I hope so, I don't know."

"Why, ma, yes you do. They're so fine and handsome, and high-bred and
polite, so every way superior to our gawks here in this village;
why, they'll make life different from what it was--so humdrum
and commonplace, you know--oh, you may be sure they're full of
accomplishments, and knowledge of the world, and all that, that will be
an immense advantage to society here. Don't you think so, ma?"

"Mercy on me, how should I know, and I've hardly set eyes on them yet."
After a pause she added, "They made considerable noise after they went
up."

"Noise? Why, ma, they were singing! And it was beautiful, too."

"Oh, it was well enough, but too mixed-up, seemed to me."

"Now, ma, honor bright, did you ever hear 'Greenland's Icy Mountains'
sung sweeter--now did you?"

"If it had been sung by itself, it would have been uncommon sweet, I
don't deny it; but what they wanted to mix it up with 'Old Bob Ridley'
for, I can't make out. Why, they don't go together, at all. They are not
of the same nature. 'Bob Ridley' is a common rackety slam-bang secular
song, one of the rippingest and rantingest and noisiest there is. I am
no judge of music, and I don't claim it, but in my opinion nobody can
make those two songs go together right."

"Why, ma, I thought--"

"It don't make any difference what you thought, it can't be done. They
tried it, and t