Life — January 21, 1897 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE IMMORTALS ON THE “ SUNDAY WORLD.” pt.” es RATHER a ditch in E — Shakespeare. “How instinct varies in the swine.""— Pope. grov'ling “Calumny is only the noise of madmen.” — Diogenes. “There are calumnies against w innocence loses courag: ich even — Napoleon, “The chaos of events."— Byron. — Beattie, “Who would not, finding a way, break loose from hell ?""— Milton. “Where God hath a temple, the devil will have a chapel."— Barton. “Be ignorance thy choi Clouds on clouds in volumes driven, Curtain round the vault of heaven.” — Peacock “Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up."— Rustin, “They that touch pitch will be defiled.” — Shakespeare. “Thad rather be a dog."— Shakespeare. H Have you heard my new song, ‘The Proposal"? SHE: No—what key is it written in? “Be mine—er.” “Twill, And now you can trans- pose it to the key of ‘A flat.’” . . OMETIMES one's pleasantest memories are of events that didn’t happen. > LIFE: A SCOTTISH VERSION. MAC IAN, BY BARRIE Mies: may I gac oot to sweem ? Aye, me dairlin’ dochther. Hang your kilt on a thustle, dear, And don't gae nigh the wachther. For ye be pure-bred Scotch, me lass, And perhaps the mon that’s To make ye his bride would far prefair His Scotch unadoolterated. fated DINING. But my business is im- Why can’t I see the AWYER: ~ portant. judge ? His honor is at steak TO THE Le THE AMERICAN COMPOSER. “THE nortnern section of our hemisphere bas long been in expectant attitude, sweeping the musical firmament with tele- scopes, awaiting the advent of The American composer. Plenty of composers compose — in fact, their annual crop exceeds the demand —but he who shall out-Wagner Wagner, prove himself a Neo-Brahm-in, and relegate Dvorak to the limbus of antediluvian bric: brac, is yet to come. Manuscript societies have been formed to egg him on to glory —still he refuses to materialize. Hints of the promise latent in Sambo's jingles have been offered, of the adaptability of Harlem's rurality for oboe solos, of the fine effect to be produced by the trombone, in depicting moral integrity of the tree which fell before Washington's axe, of the faithful reproduction of Niagara's current by hun- dreds of violins, while the genius of the kettle-drums swells the chorus in imitation of the Empire Express in near distance — still he cometh not. The Nineteenth Century tendency of for- eign composers to describe fjords, rides through cemeteries, and love-potions, some- what disconcerts the budding genius of our metropolis, who is obliged to seek local color in Trades Unions and Elevated Roads. Public Opinion offers the chief bar to our composer’s triumphal entry. The general impression of Paterfamilias, that Beethoven was a contemporary of Confucius; of Mater- familias, that a ‘‘sonata” is some horror to be avoided, fit cause for vaccination, and that a symphony isa “* ceremony " associated with evening dress, opera glass and slight Sweet-Girl-Graduates from Miss X——'s Finishing-School, that the mis- sion of Chopin was identical with that of the founder of the house of Huyler, would seem to justify the apparent fear of intrusion and dubious nature of reception by the Muse of Mu Were such density which prevails in our community regarding Music but swept aside by the besom of Intelligence, ‘twould be safe to prophesy that the exultant scream of the American eagle fortissimo /urioso would be prelude to act the first, announcing the arrival of The American Composer. of our I - we could have all we now want we should have a much conception of what was necess happines THERE YOU ARE, YOU OLD FooL!"”