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Show All Grist to His Mill. A group of Chicago musicians was praising the compositions of Walter Damrosch. "He should compose more." one said. "He has a splendid talent. From every sound in nature he learns something. "At the time he was at work on 'The Scarlet Letter,' he and I went walking one lovely summer day. In a wood he suddenly seized my arm. " Hush! he said, and pointed to a huge beetle that went droning by. " 'I wanted,' he explained afterward, 'to hear how its note would die away.' "And one day the next winter he showed me the superb passage in 'The Scarlet Letter, where the 'cello modulates modu-lates in the chord of the seventh of the descending scale from B minor to F sharp minor. " 'There is the beetle of our last summer's sum-mer's walk,' he said." |