The piano may do for lovesick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles, and slate pencils. But give me the banjo. When you want genuine music-music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whiskey, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose. When you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!
- Mark Twain, Early Tales and Sketches, Vol.2 (1864-65)
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