He stopped a moment or two to catch breath. Then he got mad. He run his
fingers through his hair, he shoved up his sleeve, he opened his
coat-tails a leetle further, he drug up his stool, he leaned over, and,
sir, he just went for that old pianner. He slapped her face, he boxed
her jaws, he pulled her nose, he pinched her ears, and he scratched her
cheeks, until she fairly yelled. He knocked her down and he stamped on
her shameful. She bellowed like a bull, she bleated like a calf, she
howled like a hound, she squealed like a pig, she shrieked like a rat,
and _then_ he wouldn't let her up. He run a quarter stretch down the low
grounds of the base, till he got clean in the bowels of the earth, and
you heard thunder galloping after thunder through the hollows and caves
of perdition; and then he fox-chased his right hand with his left till
he got 'way out of the treble into the clouds, whar the notes was finer
than the p'ints of cambric needles, and you couldn't hear nothin' but
the shadders of 'em. And _then_ he wouldn't let the old pianner go. He
for'ard two'd, he crost over first gentleman, he chassade right and
left, back to your places, he all hands'd aroun', ladies to the right,
promenade all, in and out, here and there, back and forth, up and down,
perpetual motion, double twisted and turned and tacked and tangled into
forty-eleven thousand double bow-knots.

By jinks! it was a mixtery. And then he wouldn't let the old pianner go.
He fetcht up his right wing, he fetcht up his left wing, he fetcht up
his center, he fetcht up his reserves. He fired by file, he fired by
platoons, by company, by regiments, and by brigades. He opened his
cannon,--siege-guns down thar, Napoleons here, twelve-pounders
yonder,--big guns, little guns, middle-sized guns, round shot, shells,
shrapnels, grape, canister, mortar, mines and magazines, every livin'
battery and bomb a-goin' at the same time. The house trembled, the