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Updated: September 14, 2025
Dick stood by the regular flute-player, who, rather grudgingly, made room at his tall stand; and then, as the bandmaster called attention with a fresh tap of the baton and opened the score, the flautist said: "Beg pardon, Mr Wilkins, sir; here's the recruit. Is he to stand with me?"
A reception, from which he could not be absent, was evidently about to take place. Yes, that was certainly the case; for now the magnificent galley had approached as near the land as the shallow water permitted, and the whistle of the rowers' flute-player, shouts of command, and the barking of dogs could be heard.
Every passion and crime had found a home in their palaces! "The flute-player, Cleopatra's father, was by no means the worst. He was a slave to his own caprices; no one had taught him to bridle his passions. Where it served his purpose, even death was summoned to his aid; but this was a custom of the last sovereigns of his race.
The Carian woman hated them both equally; but she loved a flute-player, and received him at night in her chamber. One morning he left there the wreath which he usually wore at feasts. My two brothers, having found this wreath, swore to kill the flute-player, and the next day they caused him to perish under the lash, in spite of his tears and prayers.
The citizens indeed, long exasperated against their good flute-player and bad ruler, and now reduced to extremities by the definitive loss of Cyprus and the pressure of the taxes which were raised to an intolerable degree in consequence of the transactions with the Romans , chased him on that account out of the country.
All at once, after a loud passage, the band wound up with a series of chords, leaving the principal flute-player sustaining one long note and then dropping to the octave below, from which he started upon a series of runs, paused, and commenced a solo full of florid passages introductory to a delicious melody one of those plaintive airs which, once heard, cling evermore to the memory.
He scolded, and pelted the poor creatures with stones. Some of the sheep were hit, and they made up their minds to go on; but the rest remained spell-bound by the music. At last the shepherd was forced to entreat the flute-player to stop his music.
The flute-player flitted past once more; again the pianist thundered; a young fellow of twenty, pomaded and curled, but with traces of tears on his cheeks, sawed out some variations on his fiddle.
He beat time and the two instruments sounded; but, at the end of the first bar, the clarionet-player took the reed from his lips. "'Tain't good enough, sir!" he said. "Good enough!" cried Wilkins, angrily; "it's disgraceful!" "Yer never thought it disgraceful till this new chap come," cried the discomfited flute-player. "Who's to play proper on a thing like this? Look at his!"
'Then, Conscript fathers, said Duilius, 'if you think that I have deserved well of the country, take away from me, in recompense for this second victory, this cursed flute-player, whom you gave me for the first. The senate thought the request strange, but they had pledged their word, and at that period people kept their promises.
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