I watched the three who were playing. They might have been robots, so mechanical was their performance, and I asked myself if it was possible that at one time, when they were setting out, they had thought they might be musicians whom people would come from far to hear and to applaud. Even to play the violin badly you must take lessons and practice: did that fiddler go to all that trouble just to play foxtrots till the small hours of the morning in that stinking squalor?
