One night a gentleman visitor insisted on singing
'By the sad sea waves,' which he did vilely, and he
wound up his performance by a most unexpected and
misplaced embellishment, or 'turn.' Dickens found the
whole ordeal very trying, but managed to preserve a
decorous silence till this sound fell on his ear, when
his neighbour said to him, 'Whatever did he mean by
that extraneous effort of melody?' 'Oh,' said Dickens,
'that's quite in accordance with rule. When things
are at their worst they always take a _turn_.'

Forster relates that while he was at work on the _Old Curiosity
Shop_ he used to discover specimens of old ballads in his
country walks between Broadstairs and Ramsgate, which so
aroused his interest that when he returned to town towards
the end of 1840 he thoroughly explored the ballad literature
of Seven Dials,[4] and would occasionally sing not a few of
these wonderful discoveries with an effect that justified
his reputation for comic singing in his childhood. We get a
glimpse of his investigations in _Out of the Season_, where
he tells us about that 'wonderful mystery, the music-shop,'
with its assortment of polkas with coloured frontispieces, and
also the book-shop, with its 'Little Warblers and Fairburn's
Comic Songsters.'

Here too were ballads on the old ballad paper and
in the old confusion of types, with an old man in a
cocked hat, and an armchair, for the illustration
to Will Watch the bold smuggler, and the Friar of