The Argosy — page 162: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Our Amateur Concert. 147 one of the doomed creatures who figured on the programme. In another moment up came Mr. Downs leading Miss Fanny Markham, and up came Mr. Wilson leading Miss Annie. Little Sutton tripped lightly after them, and glided to the instrument to accompany. Enthusiastic marks of approval burst from the audience. It was easy enough to come up, but not so easy, it seemed, to arrange themselves. Our glee-singers were evidently on a platform for the first time in their lives. On coming up the two gentlemen stood in the middle, with a lady on each outside. This seemed to strike them as wrong. The gentlemen stepped back to allow the ladies to pass into the centre position. ‘The ladies, not understanding their intention, stepped back also. They collided. An audible titter ran through the audience, though they kept on clapping. Mrs. Smallwood looked hard at her programme, and bit her hp. An agreeable but somewhat puzzling little episode ensued among our friends on the platform. With crimson faces, and a pained expression on the same, they seemed bent on performing a scrap out of a quadrille. The scared faces of the two violinists were plainly visible peering from the artistes’ room. At last, with a desperate plunge, the unlucky four advanced to the front, the two girls in the middle and the gentlemen outside. ‘The clapping continued. ‘ Bow! bow!” Sutton had been muttering ever since taking his place at the instru- ment. Fanny Markham heard it at length, and straightway performed a spasmodic, apologetic obeisance. Her colleagues caught it as if it had been a yawn, and followed her example, hurriedly and not too sracefully. Then began a mighty rustling and turning over of music, and a furtive comparing of divers passages, together with an exchange of frightened, beseeching glances between the glee-singers. Mr. Downs dropped his copy and picked it up again. The clapping ceased. A feeble prelude trickled over the keys of the concert grand, and the glee commenced. I do not know if my reader is acquainted with the glee entitled ‘“The Matadores.” It is not a bad one Jn its way, and possesses the desideratum (with some persons) that a vast amount of noise caz be got out of it. The bass voice has, among other trifling duties, to imitate the bellowing of a bull—matadores, I believe, have some mysterious connection with those animals. Mr. Downs had been wont to do this part rather well. But, alas! to-night he began the bellowing of the musical beast much too soon; found out his error ; ceased ; forgot when it ought to come in; completely lost his head ; and did nothing but give a series of feeble, experimental bellows, at intervals of five or six bars, throughout the whole of the first part of the composition. Fanny Markham was a semi-tone flat, and her sister about the same interval sharp. Wilson cracked on all his high notes—so the effect was altogether pleasing. When they reached the end of the first part Fanny and Annie looked unutterable things at each other, and the two men stared hard Cconniclbooolks (C(O)