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Show : : r - - mm I SEEDK LIFE WITU MUM BX$ ' i by &. v. HobrTl II to , : : : : : : : II $ ?John Henry Has a Musical i f Evening. 311.1 'f Jt AY! did you ever stray i S away from home of an iSj T evening and go to one of 4 lose parlor riots? ' j Friend wife called it a musi-e musi-e ale, but to me it looked more ke a session of the Mexican 8 ingress in a boiler factory., Tf I They pulled it off at Mrs. Lu-S Lu-S 11a Frothingham's, over on the b )nve. i l like Luella and I like her 4 ;iisband, Jack Frothingham, so ;'s no secret conclave of the jivil association when I whis-i whis-i er them wise that the next i'S ime they give a musical evens' even-s' ig my address is Forest ave-ue, ave-ue, corner of Foliage street, in ie woods. (The Frothinghams are nice tople and old friends and they Kve more money than some , jBlks have hay, but that doesn't Ve them a license to spoil one B mv perfectly good evenings I y sprinkling a lot of canned insic and fricasseed recitations ia I over it. H $The Frothinghams have a teleton in their closet. Its name jr Uncle Heck and he weighs 17 not bad for a skeleton. ,l1 hcle Heck isa Joe Morgan. His i ii )le ambition in life is to become i&i )litely pickled and fall asleep ?i raped over a gold chair in the Hawing room when there's 1 'ftfgh-class company present. 'riS'For that reason the Frothing- ams on state occasions put the ik fids under Uncle Heck and run ijj im olF stage till after the final i iirtain. i ' 'a On some occasions Uncle Heck y,t reaks through the bars and e? ashes into the scene of refine-,.J refine-,.J lent with merry quip and jest '. ) the confusion of his relatives iid the ill-concealed amusement pis i , 'v their guests. 4 tfThis was one of those occa- mk pns. l, Early in the evening Jack ' ok Uncle Heck to his room, i!fl it him in front of a quart of hv ntage and left the old geezer , lere to slosh around in the : tf until sleep claimed him for (lis nie own. . But before the wine was gone riei cle Heck put on the gloves ith Morpheus, got the decision, arched down stairs and into US ; . . e drawing room, where he im-m im-m ediately insisted upon being eys ie life of the party. eS iUncle Heck moved and sec-ided sec-ided that he sing the swan jjf hg from "Lohengrin," but his ?H a swan waj so much apjj e a turkey gobbler that lov-J lov-J & friends slipped him the moc-lit moc-lit ams and elbowed him out of 1$ Q room, ti JThen he went out in the but-fs but-fs 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 s;tone'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 px-esent at the battle bat-tle 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's sister, and a few others who asked to have their names omitted. - The mad revels were inaugurated inaugu-rated 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 Toy-land" Toy-land" on their mandolins as an encore. If Victor Herbert ever catch- j ' "Then Claribel let down her hair and proceeded to give us a mad scene and it was." ! 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. lady-bug. Imogene sang "Sleep, Sweetly Sleep," and then kept us awake with her voice. Then we had Eufus Kellar .Smith, the parlor prestidigitator. prestidigita-tor. Ruf us was a bad boy. He cooked an omelet in a silk hat and when he handed the hat back to Hep Hardy two poached eggs fell out and cuddled cud-dled up in Hep's hair. Rufus apologized and said "He immediately insisted upon being the life of the party." es them there'll be a couple of shine chord-chokers away to the bad. When tne 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. he'd do the trick over again if someone would lend him a hat, but nothing doing. We all preferred pre-ferred our eggs boiled. Then we had Claribel Montrose Mont-rose 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 half-nelson on Poe's "Raven" and put it out of business. 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 stalled in to give us a mad scene and it was. Everybody Ev-erybody in the room got mad. When peace was finally restored re-stored Mrs. Frothingham informed in-formed us that the .rest of the "paid" talent had disappointed her 'and she'd have to depend on the volunteers. Then she whispered whis-pered to Miss Gladiola Hunger-schnitz, Hunger-schnitz, 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. mu-sic. She can take a Hungarian rhapsody and turn it into a goulash gou-lash 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 sur-prise 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 Ken tucky Home, with variations, until everybody who had a home began to weep for fear it might get to be like her Kentucky Ken-tucky 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 al-ways keeps her eyes closed, so she can't tell just when her audience au-dience gets up and leaves the room. The next treat was a mixed duet on the flute and trombone between Clarence Smith and Lancelot Diffenberger, with a violm obhgato on the side by Hector Tompkins. Never before have I seen music mu-sic 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 led out in the middle of the room, where he assassinated Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rustica-na" Rustica-na" so thoroughly that it will never be able to enter a fifty-cent fifty-cent . table d'hote restaurant again. Almost before the audience had time to recover Peaches's sister, Jennie, was coaxed to sing Tosti's "Good-by." I'm very fond of sister Jen- nie, but I'm afraid if Mr. Tosti ever heard her sing his "Good-by" "Good-by" 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 nignt. I suppose it's wrong for me to pull this about your own flesh and blood, but when a married woman with six. fine children, one of them at Yale, walks sideways side-ways up to a piano and begins to squeak, "Goodby, summer! Goodby, 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 fig-uring it all out that there was no chance of his getting arrest ed, sat down on the piano stool 1 1 and made a few sad remarks, B I which in their original state K I form the basis of a Scotch bal- B fl lad called "Loch Lomond." B fl Bud's system of speaking the B fl English language is to say with B fl his voice as- much of a word as B he can remember and then fin- fl fl ish the rest of it with his hands. B Imagine what Bud would do B fl to a song with an oatmeal foun- B fl dation like "Loch Lomond." B I When Bud barked out the first B I few bars, which say "By yon B I bonnie bank and by yon bonnie B I brae," everybody within hearing B I would have cried with joy if the B I piano had fallen over on him and B I flattened his equator. B I And when he reached the plot B I of the piece, where it says, B I "You take the high road and B I I'll take the low road," Uncle B Peter took a drink, Phil Merton fl I took the same, Stub took an B I oath and I took a walk. B I And all the while Bud's wife E I sat there, with the glad and B I winning smile of a swordfish on B I her face, listening with a heart I I full of pride while her crime- I I laden husband chased that help- B I less song all over the parlor, and I I finally left it unconscious under B I the sofa. I I At that point Hep Hardy got fl I up and volunteered to tell some I I funny stories and this gave us II all a good excuse to put on our I I overshoes and say "Good Night" I I to our hostess without offend- I I ing anybody. I I Hep Hardy and his funny I I stories are always used to close I I the show. I I "John," said Peaches after we I I got home, "I want to give a II musicale. May I?" II "Certainly, old girl," I an- I I swered. We'll give one m the nearest moving-picture theater. I If we don't like the show all we I have to do is to close our eyes I and thank our lucky stars j there's nothing to listen to." ) "Oh! aren't you hateful!" she pouted. ! Maybe I am, at that. j (Copyright. IPIS. by the McClure News- paper Syndicate.) (All dramatic and stage rights reserved 1 by Gcorgo V. Hofoart.) j |