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Show BRASS <br><br> It is generally conceded that the use of brass musical instruments has greatly increased in this country during the last ten years. Few persons, however, have any accurate idea of the appalling progress which this terrible vice has made. There is probably not a village in the whole country without its habitual and shameless player on the cornet, while the number of those who are addicted to brass instruments, either openly and to an extent which they call "moderate," or secretly and to a ruinous excess, is estimated by trustworthy statisticians to amount to fully three per cent of our entire adult population. In comparison with these figures the prevalence of drunkenness becomes insignificant and opium eating hardly deserves notice.<br><br>v To the demoralization caused by the civil war is doubtless due much of this giant evil. In the camp and the field men were brought in familiar contact with the bugle, the cornet, the trombone, and the serpent. The natural horror which a pure minded man feels in witnessing the abuse of brass instruments vanished by degrees. The ears of our soldiers became calloused, and from listening with indifference to the abuse of brass by others, it was an easy step for them to adopt the habit themselves. The bugler brought his bugle home with him, and as he blew it in his house and on the street, his evil example contaminated the young and thoughtless. Then the long years of business depression, of bankruptcy and poverty which followed the war, led many to drown their miseries in brass. The ruined merchant or the mechanic without employment lost heart and tried to forget his wretchedness by dulling his senses with the cornet or trombone. Lastly, we must notice the pernicious influence of those unhappy men, Levy, Arbuckle and similar offenders who have been made to minister to a depraved taste for brass, and have made this vice popular and even fashionable.<br><br> It is not necessary to take the extreme ground held by certain fanatics, that the use of brass instruments is in all cases wrong. Like ardent spirits, brass has its uses, and a brass instrument may be played in such a way and at such a time as to render it not only harmless but beneficial. As tot he use of brass instruments by the wretched class of beings commonly called by the degrading name of amateurs, there can however, be no difference of opinion. They work far greater injury than the coarse and maddening accordeon [accordion] and banjo. The latter are used only by the lowest class of the community, but the cornet invades our happiest homes, and the trombone counts among its victims the noblest and best men in the nation. In this, as in the kindred vice of intemperance in the use of ardent spirits, the course of the victim is steadily downward. Many a man has fancied that he could safely blow a few notes on the regulation bugle. The horrible thirst for brass, however, once formed, constantly increases. Before very long the bugle is laid aside, and the fiery cornet takes its place. At first the cornet amateur indulges his depraved passion at home, and in the secrecy of closed doors and windows, but sooner or later he casts off shame, and is soon on his front piazza or heard at his front window openly practicing the "Mabel [line missing/unreadable] finds the cornet in its [line missing/unreadable] his unholy thirst, and he takes the destroying trombone to his lips. This is no mere picture of the imagination. There are scores of confirmed trombone players lively to-day who began their downward career with the comparatively harmless bugle or with a "moderate" indulgence on the cornet.<br><br> The time has come when good men should everywhere join in an organized effort to stem the tide of brass which threatens to overwhelm our beloved land. We must demand a strict license law regulating the sale of brass instruments, and a "civil damages" act making the vender of brass instruments and the amateur player thereon liable, jointly and severally, for all the damages to property and persons which may result from the use of any variety of brass instruments. Persons found guilty of playing the cornet should be punished with fine and imprisonment, and it should be made lawful for any magistrate to commit a confirmed and notorious trombone player to the lunatic asylum, and to appoint a receiver and administrator of his property. Books, tracts and lectures on the evils of brass instruments should be employed to develop a healthy public sentiment, and the young should be induced to join societies pledged to total abstinence from brass in every form. But there must be no delay. The evil must be met by legal methods now, or we must be prepared to see the shops of instrument dealers mobbed by maddened women, and cornet and trombone players shot by infuriated men, whose wrongs have mastered and slain their patience and their law-abiding instincts.-N. Y. Times. |