illustrious name of George Frederick Handel.

Then he put on a pair of spectacles which were lying on the mantelpiece,
and balanced them on the end of his nose. Finally he adjusted his little
hands to the straps of the concertina. You might imagine that he would
instantly dissolve into melody. Not at all. He glanced at the page of
music first through his spectacles, and then, bending forward his head,
_over_ his spectacles. Then he put down the concertina, gingerly, on a
chair, and moved the music half-an-inch (perhaps five-eighths) to the
left. He resumed the concertina, and was on the very point of song, when
he put down the concertina for the second time, and moved the tassel of
his Turkish cap from the neighbourhood of his left ear to the
neighbourhood of his right ear. Then, with a cough, he resumed the
concertina once more, and embarked upon the interpretation of Handel.

It was the Hallelujah Chorus.

Any surprise which the musical reader may feel on hearing that James
Ollerenshaw was equal to performing the Hallelujah Chorus on a
concertina (even one inlaid with mother-of-pearl) argues on the part of
that reader an imperfect acquaintance with the Five Towns. In the Five
Towns there are (among piano scorners) two musical instruments, the
concertina and the cornet. And the Five Towns would like to see the
composer clever enough to compose a piece of music that cannot be
arranged for either of these instruments. It is conceivable that
Beethoven imagined, when he wrote the last movement of the C Minor
Symphony, that he had produced a work which it would be impossible to
arrange for cornet solo. But if he did he imagined a vain thing. In the
Five Towns, where the taste for classical music is highly developed, the
C Minor Symphony on a single cornet is as common as "Robin Adair" on a