"Jolly? yes, we'll be jolly. Old King Cole was a jolly old soul, and a jolly old soul was he. He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl wonder if he got it? My name is Dennis, my mother's maiden name was Moore, so that if I'd been born before she married, I'd have been a poet, which I'm sorry to say, don't think it, for I ain't. I'm glad to see you, Mr. Wagstaff, and as you say you're jolly, and propose that we shall all be jolly, perhaps you'll favor me by coming out strong on the second and fourth lines of this chorus.
"I'll do my little utmost," said Wagstaff.
And he did do his little utmost with a will, and their united voices croaked up again the first man with the steeple-crowned hat, who hadn't got his eyes fairly opened before he joined in the chorus too, and he gave his particular attention to it, and put in so many unexpected cadenzas and quavers which the composer never intended, and shakes that nobody else could put in, and trills that his companions couldn't keep up with, that he fairly astonished his hearers. And he didn't stop when they did, but kept singing "tooral li tooral," with unprecedented variations, and wouldn't hold up for Dennis to sing the verses, and wouldn't wait for Wagstaff to take breath; but kept right on, now putting a long shake on "tooral," now an unheard of trill on "looral," now coming out with redoubled force on the final "la," and then starting off again, as if his voice had run away with him and he didn't want to stop it, but was going to sing a perpetual chorus of unceasing "toorals" and never ending "loorals."
For fifteen minutes his harmony was allowed uninterrupted progress, but at length Wagstaff, putting his hand over his mouth, thereby smothering, in its infancy, a strain of extraordinary power, addressed him thus:
"I don't want to interfere with any of your little arrangements, stranger, but, if you don't stop that noise, I'll knock your head off. What do you mean by intruding your music upon other people's music, and thus mixing the breed? Don't you try to swallow my fist, you can't digest it."
The latter part of this address was called forth by the frantic efforts of the unknown amateur to get his mouth away from behind Wagstaff's hand, which he at length accomplished, and when he had recovered his breath he made an effort to speak. The musical fiend, however, had got too strong possession of him to give up on so short a notice, and he was unable to speak more than ten words without introducing another touch of the magical chorus. The address with which he first favored his companions ran something after the following fashion and sounded as if he might have been the identical Vilikins, unexpectedly recovered from the effects of the "cup of cold pison," or prematurely resurrected from the "same grave," wherein he had been disposed by the "cruel parient" by the side of the lamented "Dinah."
"My friends, don't interrupt the concert too ral li, too ral li, too ral li la. I'll explain presently
with a too ral li, too ral li, too ral li la. I'm delighted to meet you allow me to introduce myself ral li la I am a professional loo ral li, loo ral li man ral li la my name is Moses Overdale with my loo ral li, loo ral li, loo ral li la."
Here he stopped, evidently by a violent exertion, and shook hands with each of the others, and afforded such a view of his personal appearance as satisfied the individual of the solitary optic, and his companion of the vegetable leg, that they had fallen in with another original added to the fact, with which they were already well acquainted, that he had a powerful, though not very controllable voice. Other things about the newly-discovered person showed him to be a man far above, or below, or, at least, differing from, the common run of people one meets in a railroad-car. His face, had it been visible to the naked eye, through the surrounding thicket of hair, might have passed for good-looking; but the hirsute crop which flourished about his head was something really remarkable. If each hair had possessed as many roots as a scrub oak sapling, and had grown the wrong way, with the roots out, there couldn't have been more; or if each individual hair had been grafted with a score of thrifty shoots, and each of them, in turn, had given off a multitude of sandy-colored sprouts, and each separate sprout had taken an unconquerable aversion to every other sprout, and was striving to grow in an independent direction of its own, there wouldn't have been a more abundant display of hair, growing towards a greater variety of hitherto unknown points of compass. It was so long that it concealed his neck and shoulders, and you could only suppose he had a throat from the certainty that he had a mouth. And even the mouth was in its turn ornamented with an overhanging moustache, of a subdued rat-color, which also was long, running down the corners of the jaw, and joining the rest of the beard on the neck below. A shirt-collar, turned down over his coat, was dimly visible whenever the wind was strong enough to lift the superincumbent hair.