YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT A MUSICAL EVENING
Say! did you ever stray away from home of an evening and go to one of
those parlor riots?
Friend wife called it a _musicale_, but to me it looked like a session
of the Mexican congress in a boiler factory.
They pulled it off at Mrs. Luella Frothingham's, over on the Drive.
I like Luella and I like her husband, Jack Frothingham, so it's no
secret conclave of the Anvil Association when I whisper them wise that
the next time they give a musical evening my address is Forest Avenue,
corner of Foliage Street, in the woods.
The Frothinghams are nice people and old friends and they have more
money than some people have hay, but that doesn't give them a license to
spoil one of my perfectly good evenings by sprinkling a lot of canned
music and fricasseed recitations all over it.
The Frothinghams have a skeleton in their closet. Its name is Uncle Heck
and he weighs 237--not bad for a skeleton. Uncle Heck is a Joe Morgan.
His sole ambition in life is to become politely pickled and fall asleep
draped over a gold chair in the drawing room when there's high-class
company present.
For that reason the Frothinghams on state occasions put the skids under
Uncle Heck and run him off stage till after the final curtain.
On some occasions Uncle Heck breaks through the bars and dashes into the
scene of refinement with merry quip and jest to the confusion of his
relatives and the ill-concealed amusement of their guests.
This was one of those occasions.
Early in the evening Jack took Uncle Heck to his room, sat him in front
of a quart of vintage, and left the old geezer there to slosh around in
the surf until sleep claimed him for its own.
But after the wine was gone Uncle Heck put on the gloves with Morpheus,
got the decision, marched down stairs and into the drawing room, where
he immediately insisted upon being the life of the party.
Uncle Heck moved and seconded that he sing the swan song from
_Lohengrin_, but his idea of a swan was so much like a turkey gobbler
that loving friends slipped him the moccasins and elbowed him out of the
room.
Then he went out in the butler's pantry, hoping to do an Omar Khayyam
with the grape, but, not finding any, he began to recite, "Down in the
Lehigh Valley me and my people grew; I was a blacksmith, Cap'n; yes, and
a good one, too! Let me sit down a minute, a stone's got into my
shoe----"
But it wasn't a stone, and it didn't get into his shoe. It was a potato
salad and it got into his face when the Irish cook threw it at him for
interfering with her work.
"I'm discouraged," murmured Uncle Heck, and presently he was sleeping
with magnificent noises on the sofa in the library.
There were present at the battle in the drawing room Uncle Peter Grant
and Aunt Martha; Hep Hardy and his diamond shirt studs; Bunch Jefferson
and his wife, Alice; Bud Hawley and his second wife; Phil Merton and his
third wife; Dave Mason and his stationary wife; Stub Wilson and his
wife, Jennie, who is Peaches' sister, and a few others who asked to have
their names omitted.
The mad revels were inaugurated by the Pippin Brothers, who attempted to
drag some grouchy music out of guitars that didn't want to give up. The
Pippin Brothers part their hair in the middle and always do the march
from "The Babes in Toyland" on their mandolins as an encore.
If Victor Herbert ever catches them there'll be a couple of shine
chord-chokers away to the bad.
When the Pippin Brothers took a bow and backed off into a vase of
flowers we were all invited to listen to a soprano solo by Miss Imogene
Glassface.
When Imogene sings she makes faces at herself. When she needs a high
note she goes after it like a hen after a lady-bug. Imogene sang
"Sleep, Sweetly Sleep!" and then kept us awake with her voice.
Then we had Rufus Kellar Smith, the parlor prestidigitator. Rufus was a
bad boy.
He cooked an omelette in a silk hat and when he handed the hat back to
Hep Hardy two poached eggs fell out and cuddled up in Hep's hair.
Rufus apologized and said he'd do the trick over again if some one would
lend him a hat, but nothing doing. We all preferred our eggs boiled.
Then we had Claribel Montrose in select recitations. She was all the
money.
Claribel grabbed "The Wreck of the Hesperus" between her pearly teeth
and shook it to death. Then she got a half-Nelson on Poe's "Raven" and
put it out of business.
[Illustration]
Next she tried an imitation of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.
If Juliet talked like that dame did no wonder she took poison.
Then Claribel let down her back hair and started in to give us a mad
scene--and it was. Everybody in the room got mad.
When peace was finally restored Mrs. Frothingham informed us that the
rest of the "paid" talent had disappointed her and she'd have to depend
on the volunteers. Then she whispered to Miss Gladiola Hungerschnitz,
whereupon that young lady giggled her way over to the piano and began to
knock its teeth out.
The way Gladiola went after one of Beethoven's sonatas and slapped its
ears was pitiful.
Gladiola learned to injure a piano at a conservatory of music. She can
take a Hungarian rhapsody and turn it into a goulash in about 32 bars.
At the finish of the sonata we all applauded Gladiola just as loudly as
we could, in the hope that she would faint with surprise and stop
playing, but no such luck.
She tied a couple of chords together and swung that piano like a pair of
Indian clubs.
First she did "My Old Kentucky Home," with variations, until everybody
who had a home began to weep for fear it might get to be like her
Kentucky home.
The variations were where she made a mistake and struck the right note.
Then Gladiola moved up to the squeaky end of the piano and gave an
imitation of a Swiss music box.
It sounded to me like a Swiss cheese.
Presently Gladiola ran out of raw material and subsided, while we all
applauded her with our fingers crossed, and two very thoughtful ladies
began to talk fast to Gladiola so as to take her mind off the piano.
This excitement was followed by another catastrophe named Minnehaha
Jones, who picked up a couple of soprano songs and screeched them at us.
Minnehaha is one of those fearless singers who vocalize without a
safety-valve. She always keeps her eyes closed so she can't tell just
when her audience gets up and leaves the room.
The next treat was a duet on the flute and trombone between Clarence
Smith and Lancelot Diffenberger, with a violin obligate on the side by
Hector Tompkins.
Never before have I seen music so roughly handled.
It looked like a walk-over for Clarence, but in the fifth round he blew
a couple of green notes and Lancelot got the decision.
Then, for a consolation prize, Hector was led out in the middle of the
room, where he assassinated Mascagni's _Cavalleria Rusticana_ so
thoroughly that it will never be able to enter a fifty-cent _table
d'hôte_ restaurant again.
Almost before the audience had time to recover Peaches' sister, Jennie,
was coaxed to sing Tosti's "Good Bye!"
I'm very fond of sister Jennie, but I'm afraid if Mr. Tosti ever heard
her sing his "Good Bye" he would say, "the same to you, and here's your
hat."
Before Jennie married and moved West I remember she had a very pretty
mezzo-concertina voice, but she's been so long away helping Stub Wilson
to make Milwaukee famous that nowadays her top notes sound like a cuckoo
clock after it's been up all night.
I suppose it's wrong for me to pull this about our own flesh and blood,
but when a married woman with six fine children, one of them at Yale,
walks sideways up to a piano and begins to squeak, "Good bye, summer!
Good bye, summer!" just as if she were calling the dachshund in to
dinner, I think it's time she declined the nomination.
Then Bud Hawley, after figuring it all out that there was no chance of
his getting arrested, sat down on the piano stool and made a few sad
statements, which in their original state form the basis of a Scotch
ballad called "Loch Lomond."
Bud's system of speaking the English language is to say with his voice
as much of a word as he can remember and then finish the rest of it with
his hands.
Imagine what Bud would do to a song with an oat-meal foundation like
"Loch Lomond."
When Bud barked out the first few bars, which say, "By yon bonnie bank
and by yon bonnie brae," everybody within hearing would have cried with
joy if the piano had fallen over on him and flattened his equator.
And when he reached the plot of the piece, where it says, "You take the
high road and I'll take the low road," Uncle Peter took a drink, Phil
Merton took the same, Stub took an oath, and I took a walk.
And all the while Bud's wife sat there, with the glad and winning smile
of a swordfish on her face, listening with a heart full of pride while
her crime-laden husband chased that helpless song all over the parlor,
and finally left it unconscious under the sofa.
At this point Hep Hardy got up and volunteered to tell some funny
stories and this gave us all a good excuse to put on our overshoes and
say "Good night" to our hostess without offending anybody.
Hep Hardy and his funny stories are always used to close the show.
"John," said Peaches after we got home; "I want to give a _musicale_,
may I?"
"Certainly, old girl," I answered. "We'll give one in the nearest moving
picture theater. If we don't like the show all we have to do is to close
our eyes and thank our lucky stars there's nothing to listen to."
"Oh! aren't you hateful!" she pouted.
Maybe I am at that.
* * * * *
A LIST of BOOKS
By
HUGH McHUGH
(GEORGE V. HOBART)
This famous author of the well-known "John Henry" books numbers his
sales almost up to the million-mark, and his delightful humor has
created wholesome fun for readers wherever his books are to be found.
Every page brings fresh amusement, and every paragraph tickles the
fancy. They fairly radiate optimism and good cheer in every community.
Back to the Woods. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. $0.75
Beat It. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Cinders. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Dinkelspiel's Letters to Looey. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Down the Line. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Eppy Grams by Dinkelspiel. 16mo. Cloth. .75
Get Next. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Go To It. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Ikey's Letters to His Father. 12mo. Cloth. .75
I'm From Missouri. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
I Need the Money. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
It's Up to You. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
John Henry, and Other Stories. Popular Edition.
(Three volumes in one.) 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .50
On the Hog Train. Paper Covered. .25
Out for the Coin. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
The Silly Syclopedia. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
Skiddoo. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
You Can Search Me. 16mo. Cloth. Illustrated. .75
* * * * *
"THE ART OF THE PHOTOPLAY" is a condensed textbook of the technical
knowledge necessary for the preparation and sale of motion picture
scenarios. More than 35,000 photoplays are produced annually in the
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as being a successful producing manager. Among his successes were the
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WHAT THOSE WHO KNOW HAVE SAID:
"In my opinion, based upon six years' experience producing motion
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"To those who wish to earn some of the money which the moving picture
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NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF BOOKS.
"Ball's Art of the Photoplay puts into concrete form, with expert
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"You have succeeded in producing a clear and helpful exposition of the
subject." (Signed) WM. R. KANE, Editor of "The Editor Magazine."
12 mo. Cloth bound, $1.00 Net.
G. W. DILLINGHAM CO., Publishers NEW YORK
* * * * *
BOOKS BY EDWARD MARSHALL
BAT--An Idyl of New York
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THE MIDDLE WALL
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THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE
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