Thanks to my Anne, my banjo friend for this Mark Twain quote:

"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, go right through you like
Brandreth's pills, 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!"
- "Enthusiastic Eloquence," San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, 6/23/1865

Now see if I can get a few more minutes practise in before picking up the kids!!
t