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Show Uncle Wall's BALED MUSIC i fTHERE'S goinir to be a great cod. A cert at the opiTa house to. night," said the retired merchant, "and if you'll go along with me, I'll pay your way and buy you five cents' worth of peanuts. I'm sure nothing could be more liberal than '---w. that." f m'X, "You'll break f 1 yourself up in V n"' business if you go t? around wasting ' your substance in ' 'f t that fashion," re- I X 1 plied hotel IA&r's keePer- But yu F 1 wln have to I V hunt up another I - -J $ victim. Since I SV V y a bought a phono-I phono-I . ' f? , 1 ; graph and a bunch i f4 of records I have Aioi" qUit going to concerts. There's nothing but vanity and vexation of spirit about an entertainment enter-tainment of that kind. It's advertised to start at a certain hour, say eight o'clock, and you are credulous enough to think that the specifications will be lived up to. You break a hame strap to get there in time, and when you arrive, ar-rive, at ten minutes to eight, you find you're the first one there. You sit around, waiting for an hour or two, and people walk on your feet and sit down on your hat and make things unpleasant unpleas-ant as possible. "By the time the curtain goes up, you are wishing you had possessed sense enough to stay at home. But, being be-ing there, and having paW for the privilege, priv-ilege, you determine to hold her nozzle agin the bank, as it were. "The entertainment usually Is opened by a talksmith. The man who makes a few remarks always looms up at such entertainments, and should be taken to jail for obtaining money under un-der false pretenses. When he has said all that he can think of, the artists art-ists begin to dish up the music. It may be elegant music It usually is. But you can't enjoy It in comfort, for the gentleman with the large splay foot, In the seat directly behind you, persists In beating time with that organ until he drives you frantic. If you turn around and dot him in the eye, you will be ejected from the building. "Then you will find that the woman with a shrill, carrying voice, who has heard better singers, sits right In front of you, and she keeps on talking In a maddening way. The last concert I attended had a fine contralto who sang some stem-winding songs of the kind we all like. But the woman with the shrill voice was right In front of me, and I could hear her saying: 'Really, you should hear Margaret Keyes or Christine Miller sing that selection; this woman is impossible as a vocalist.' vocal-ist.' "Then a man with a hectic voice and a name that he Imported without paying duty on it, stood up and whinnied whin-nied like a doggone zebra, and we were expected to believe that he was singing sing-ing a Neapolitan song. I never heard anything that filed my nerves the way that voice did. It recalled the halcyon days when my father used to sharpen a bucksaw with a rasp. Well, when he finished his first number, the applause ap-plause was frantic, and he reared up and did it all over again. Then the applause was louder than ever, and he whinnied something else. They kept that blamed pirate there for half an hour, and I don't know when I suffered suf-fered so much. "The hall was overheated, and I was jammed in the middle of a row of seats so I couldn't get out without climbing over a number of ladles and gentlemen. We were kept there for three hours, and when I got out I swore by my Sunday hat I'd never go to another public concert. "Next day I bought a phonograph and a lot of records of the kind I like, and now I enjoy my music. ( I start It when I get ready, and quit when I am tired. No punk singers are encored. No Windy Jims introduce the singers with a few pertinent remarks. If a singer displeases me, I stop the machine ma-chine and throw the record into the alley. You'd better tear up your concert con-cert ticket and come and hear my music mu-sic mill." |