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"My excellent friend," said he, "I am heartily glad to see you. But how is this? you look as if something was wrong, and you have been travelling. Come upstairs; and if you have any lengthened stay to make in town, consider yourself my guest. Nay, as it is, you must stop with me. Here, Dandy here, you Dulcimer, bring in this gentleman's luggage, and attend him punctually."
When work was done and the traders gone, Sadko would take his dulcimer and play and sing on the banks of the river. And still he said, "There is no girl in all Novgorod as pretty as my little river." Every time he came back from his long voyages for he was trading far and near, like the greatest of merchants he went at once to the banks of the river to see how his sweetheart fared.
Presently, she took the dulcimer, for her hand was cunning in smiting it, and she began repeating to an accompaniment these couplets, "Twixt the close tied and open wide no medium Fortune knoweth, * Now ebb and flow then flow and ebb this wise her likeness showeth.
"Dandy Dulcimer!" exclaimed the priest; "why, the thief of the world! is it possible you have engaged him?" "Why? is he not honest?" asked the other, with surprise. "Honest!" replied the priest; "the vagabond's as honest a vagabond as ever lived. You may trust him in anything and everything.
"Hoist more sail yet," says the captain; and up go the white sails, swelling and tugging, while the masts creak and groan. But still the ship lay there shivering and did not move. "There is an unlucky one aboard," says an old sailor. "We must draw lots and find him, and throw him overboard into the sea." The other sailors agreed to this. And still Sadko sat, and played his dulcimer and sang.
"Troth, whoever you are, you have the advantage of me," replied the good-natured farmer, "and besides I believe you're right I'm afraid I've given offince; and as we have gone so far but no, dang my buttons, I won't I was going to try 'Kiss my Lady, along wid Dandy, it goes beautiful on the dulcimer but but ah, not half so well as on a purty pair of lips.
Before these instruments, which bring us down to modern civilized times, and constitute the genealogy of the piano-forte, we have the dulcimer and psaltery, and all the Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman harps and lyres which were struck with a quill or plectrum.
"But I tell you at once to take it aisy, achora; don't get on fire, or you'll burn the coach the compliment was not intended for you, at all events. Come, Dandy, give us the 'Bonny brown Girl, and I'll help you, as well as I'm able." In a moment the dulcimer was at work on the top of the coach, and the merry farmer, at the top of his lungs, lending his assistance inside.
All I could hear of the song, for the other children were going on with their chatter, was The clock struck one, And the mouse came down. Dickery, dickery, dock! Then there came a blast of wind, and the rain followed in straight-pouring lines, as if out of a watering-pot. Diamond jumped up with his little Dulcimer in his arms, and Nanny caught up the little boy, and they ran for the cottage.
Among the remaining subjects, which we cannot examine particularly, or in their order, are those of the Old Man and Old Woman led by Death, each to the sound of a dulcimer; the Physician, to whom in mockery Death himself brings a patient; the Astronomer, to whom the skeleton offers a skull in place of a celestial globe; the Miser, from whom Death snatches his hoarded gold; and the Merchant, whom the same inexorable hand tears away from his ships and his merchandise; the storm-tossed ship, with Death snapping the mast; a Count, dressed in the extreme of courtly splendor, who recognizes Death in the disguise of a peasant who has flung down his flail to seize his lordship's emblazoned shield and dash it to pieces; a Duchess, whom one skeleton drags rudely from her canopied bed, while another scrapes upon a violin; a Peddler; a Ploughman, of whose four-horse team Death is the driver; Gamblers, Drunkards, and Robbers, all interrupted in their wickedness by Death; a Wagoner, whose wagon, horse, and load have been tumbled in a ruinous heap by a pair of skeletons; a Blind Beggar, who stumbles over a stony path after Death, who is his deceitful leader, and who turns back with a look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment and suffering; and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a coaxing leer, to join his pastime.
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