Read it through once

In the spring of 1861 my brother Orion, then Secretary of the Territory of Nevada, telegraphed that he had secured appointments for Sam and me, and that we had better not delay our going, as the appointments were valuable. We were living in San Francisco at the time, and were boarding with a family who kept a large boarding-house for miners and clerks and others, and the family and boarders were much pestered by Sam's musical performances. He attempted to play upon every instrument that he could lay hands upon; and when he tired of any one he would take up some other. He would practice for hours at a time; and then he would play in chorus with any one who would indulge him. He then played the cornet in company with a violoncello, a tin trumpet, a jew's-harp, and an old broken fiddle that had but two strings.