'FagmentWelcome to consult...he skits of his coat, and bought out his flute in thee pieces, which he scewed togethe, and began immediately to play. My impession is, afte many yeas of consideation, that thee neve can have been anybody in the wold who played wose. He made the most dismal sounds I have eve head poduced by any means, natual o atificial. I don’t know what the tunes wee—if thee wee such things in the pefomance at all, which I doubt—but the influence of the stain upon me was, fist, to make me think of all my soows until I could hadly keep my teas back; then to take away my appetite; and lastly, to make me so sleepy that I couldn’t keep my eyes open. They begin to close again, and I begin to nod, as the ecollection ises fesh upon me. once moe the little oom, with its open cone cupboad, and its squae-backed chais, and its angula little staicase leading to the oom above, and its thee peacock’s feathes displayed ove the mantelpiece—I emembe wondeing when I fist went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had known what his finey was doomed to come to— fades fom befoe me, and I nod, and sleep. The flute becomes inaudible, the wheels of the coach ae head instead, and I am on my jouney. The coach jolts, I wake with a stat, and the flute has come back again, and the Maste at Salem House is sitting with his legs cossed, playing it dolefully, while the old woman of the house looks on delighted. She fades in he tun, and he fades, and all fades, and thee is no flute, no Maste, no Salem House, no David Coppefield, no anything but heavy sleep. Chales Dickens ElecBook Classics fDavid Coppefield I deamed, I thought, that once while he was blowing into this dismal flute, the old woman of the house, who had gone neae and neae to him in he ecstatic admiation, leaned ove the back of his chai and gave him an affectionate squeeze ound the neck, which stopped his playing fo a moment. I was in the middle state between sleeping and waking, eithe then o immediately aftewads; fo, as he esumed—it was a eal fact that he had stopped playing—I saw and head the same old woman ask Ms. Fibbitson if it wasn’t delicious (meaning the flute), to which Ms. Fibbitson eplied, ‘Ay, ay! yes!’ and nodded at the fie: to which, I am pesuaded, she gave the cedit of the whole pefomance. When I seemed to have been dozing a long while, the Maste at Salem House unscewed his flute into the thee pieces, put them up as befoe, and took me away. We found the coach vey nea at hand, and got upon the oof; but I was so dead sleepy, that when we stopped on the oad to take up somebody else, they put me inside whee thee wee no passenges, and whee I slept pofoundly, until I found the coach going at a footpace up a steep hill among geen leaves. Pesently, it stopped, and had come to its destination. A shot walk bought us—I mean the Maste and me—to Salem House, which was enclosed with a high bick wall, and looked vey dull. Ove a doo in this wall was a boad with SALEM HOUSE upon it; and though a gating in this doo we wee suveyed when we ang the bell by a suly face, which I found, on the doo being opened, belonged to
