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Show I i if Was a Long Chance a Fortune I So Remote That Nahan Franko, Jlip k 7f) I Iiianan rranKO, conaucior ror many years and hero of the story of the Josephine. By FEOSrER QUBAKELLI. Illustrated by Herb Beth. T was forty years ago. near the Christmas eea&on of 1881, that the Morgan Line steamer Josephine, running between New York and Havana, foundered in a storm off the coast of Florida, The lots of life was heavy and the disaster was one of the blackest of that remote year. The other morning, in the artists' waiting room of the Metropolitan Opera House, I heard a talc of adventure aboard the sinkius Josephine, a grim sea yarn with a lragi-comic sequeL Half a dozen men, slnger3. younger orchestra conductors and a visitor or two, all waking for a rehearsal, lounged and joked, laughed and rallied each other. A strong slender man, nritb long, swagger mustaches of white, led the drollery. droll-ery. . He was Nahan Franko. famous in musii for fifty years, as an infant prodigy violinist, ;ls a brilliant concordat, as orchestra conductor he directed with the Metropolitan during th") regimes of Conreid and of Grau and now he n director of music for one of the big hotels at one of the largest salaries known to music. "Hey, but I have had adventures in my life," a remembrance cau?ht luur and his jesting earnestness brought attention Ho turned eagerly ea-gerly to Frank de Fontenay, the veteran property man of the opera, a florid faced fellow with a quiet, droll expression of features. I "You tell them, Frank," he cried with a slap I on the other man's shoulder. "Tell them how II you found me that time in New Orleans." De Fontenay laughed in avid memory. "On Cannl Street I saw the strangest fellow,-' ho exclaimed. "It was a cold day for a New , Orleans winter, but he was barefooted and wore I a straw hat, a nightshirt and a pair of tattered J overalls. Then I saw I knew him. It was 1 Franko." t "I had been in the wreck' of the Josephine," Franko reflects ely wrinkled the heavy brows over his intent brown eyes. "I and tho Frank) Family. You have never heard of tbe Franl;o Family? It was a great affair in music a long tunc ao.- Listen." He related with an air of bravery: "My father was a wealthy Jewelry merchant of New Orleans, but during the war he not only raised a 'Polish Brigade' in the Confederate service ser-vice but also operated an extensive system of blockade running. When the South was deflate. 1 the Federal authorities put him into prison anu it cost him a large part of his fortune to get his freedom He had sixteen children and ha. I all of them educated in music. In I860 five or us, as the 'Franko Family,' played with Carlott Patti, sister of the famous Adellna, in old Stein-way Stein-way Hall. Tins began our success, a success which enabled my father to send us to Europi c returned when I was twenty and, still as the ,'Franko Family," went on a concert tour o Cuba. When we were through my father, one of my sisters and I boarded ship for New York. The sh)p was the Josephine. "It was a rough voyage from the first day Storms were up and many sail ships had bec-u wrecked We stopped several timed to pick ut. crews adrift in small boats and soon we had a company of these rough castaways aboard On the second day tho tempest grew heavict and when darkness came the staggering old ves eel was leaking badly. Then, suddenly, in tho night the cry arose "Abandon ship!" The Josephine was sinking. We my sisters, and our father ran up the steps, half clothed, keeping keep-ing together for the emergency. On deck th terrors had begun already "Men and women were milling around fantastically fan-tastically in the dim light of tho mast lamps, thrusting, struggling, BCreaming; a din arose of curses of fright and frenzied rase. A light wa) on and pistols were out. The shipwrecked sail ors that we had picked up were taking the lifeboats life-boats for themselves and, revolver in hand, were driving ship's crew and passengers from the davlt.s. Under the cover of threats, blows and random shots they launched the boats and pll;d into them. They pulled away into the darknes3, followed by the frantic imprecations of the deserted de-serted passengers. "Several llferafts remained and we launched them in a wild scramble. The Josephine was lurching over on one side and sinking rapidly. I saw my sisters on a raft and then the ship pitched heavily and I found myself in the water. I swam strongly for a few minutes then reachod a raft and pulled myself aboard Tho sea wai black and there were ghostly shouts and answering answer-ing shouts in the darkness as swimmers sought the floats. Several found us and we pulled them aboaid. Presently we had a full complement of eighteen pereons. One woman, who had been lowered from the ship, kept crying out that she did not want to get her dress wet Another was afraid that her dog might fall into the water. "Shivering with cold, I ran across Frank de Fontenay in the streets of New Orleans." In little while a swimmer stroked heavily tb us and panting, exhausted, laid hold of aur timbers. " 'Keep away we are crowded,' " a frightened man screamed. "There was light enough for mo to 6eo tho face of the one who was trying to get aboard It was my father I stooped to aid him But the shrieking protestor in his craze of fear drew a knife. ' "Keep away we are crowded.' Ho slashed with the knife at my fatner's hands. "I smashed at him with my fist, struck him on the side of the face and knocked him senseless, sense-less, and then drew ray father aboard We drifted for three days In the wind and chill, a fleet of as woebegone rafts as you will find in sea tales. Then a sailship sighted and picked us up, and after a day she transferred us to a passenger-carrying old tub bound for New Orleans." Franko did not close the phrase with the falling fall-ing inflection that marks the safe termination of an arduous adventure, but continued on as though the perils of shipwreck are only the prelude pre-lude to a fugue of, rare events. "I was in my undergarments when we were picked up, and my father and sisters were little better off than r A few rags of old clothing were distributed among tbe refugees by passengers passen-gers aud crew of the ship that was taking us. and I got a pair of ancient overalls and a Straw hat. A very bad viollnht scraped an equally-had equally-had fiddle for the amusement of the passengers during the day I borrowed tbe instrument and gae an impromptu recital. That brought me $E or which helped us a little, but when we landed In New Orleans we were as melancholy a set of castaways as had ever been seen in that port. The city had been our home gears before, but now ,we knew scarcely anybody and were in a plight. Then, as we trudged through the streets from the wharf, I saw a Joyful poster on a billboard; the old De Beauplan Opera Company Com-pany was in the city That meant a salary for me. I had played with the famous Strakosh troupe, with Clara Louise Kellogg and Mary Louise Carey, and I could sit down In the first violin section with any opera company that ever put on Rigoletto. I started on a run for the theatre, and on my way, as I went along Canal i Street. I encountered no one else than Frank d Fontenay I knew him. He had been property H man with the Strakosh Company, and now he was serving In the same office with the De Eeau-plan Eeau-plan troupe. PJ "Frank took me with him to rehearsal. The musicians hunted out some clothing to replace my overalls and straw hat. and the conductor IF; gave me a stand with the first violins. I plaved it1 that night, and after the performance was made K 1 concert raasteiv This consummation exhila- H rated the orchestra players, as a gorgeously I j happy ending of n melancholy tale. They shook di my hand and slapped my back and invited me to a saloon across the way to have drinks on them and toll them of tbe wreck of the Jose-phlne Jose-phlne and the dangers I had undergone. HI "N'c stood at the bar and talked till far past 1 midnight I told them of the shrieking hurri- flfl cane, the plunging of the ill-starred ship, the wild cry that we were sinking, the horrible perfidy of the refugee sailors who had stolen . the lifeboats, the wild time on the raft, the blow that I had struck the wretch who had slashed at my father's hands, the three terrible days adrift on the ocean, and the full circumstances MS of tbo disaster at sea All drauk and all were moed profoundly. When I had done, the mu- IL 1 . ;cians made up a purse to hold me over until If J I had got some sa'ary. Then the bartender spoke up. "He had listened to my story, had been so ab-sorbed ab-sorbed that he bad grudged the diversion of Q serving up drinks. Now he announced that he H too would donate something to the purse for me He hadn't any money to spare, but he would give me a lottery ticket And forthwith he handed me a ticket on the Louisiana lot- tery. I accepted It laughingly. I "I will give you ?2 for it. a trumpot player -s Jg a Frenchman, said obligingly "I made him give me the 12. and he took tho I lottery ticket "Several days later that ticket won $20,000 in the Louisiana lottery. It was too much for the trumpet player. The shock of getting the money and the shock of spending it were too -5 heavy for his nerves. He went crazy. A few days after the drawing he was seized and sent j to a madhouse and died there several years later.' l! |