Thar's no chance to duck the play, however, as old Hickey's word is law, so I sadly buckles on the giant drum.
"'We're jest turnin' into the picnic ground where this meetin's bein' held an' I've got thoughts of nothin' but my art--as we moosicians says--an' elevatin' the local opinion of an' concernin' the meelodious merits of the band.

We're playin' "Number Eighteen" at the time, an' I've got my eagle eye on the paper that tells me when to welt her; an' I'm shorely leatherin' away to beat a ace-flush.
"'Bein' I'm new to the big drum, an' onduly eager to succeed, I've got all my eyes picketed on the notes.

It would have been as well if I'd reeserved at least one for scenery.

But I don't; an' so it befalls that when we-all is in the very heart of the toone, an' at what it's no exaggeration to call a crisis in our destinies, I walks straddle of a stump.

An' sech is my fatal momentum that the drum rolls up on the stump, an' I rolls up on the drum.