Music Trade Review

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YOL. Y.
NEW YOEK, APKIL 5TH, 1882.
**-'
THE ONLY TRUE CONFESSIONS
—OF
A—
MUSICAL JOURNALIST.
BY
JACOB C. F E
D.
No. m.
MY
FAVORITE THEOBY IN REGARD TO CREDITORS
— T H E POTENT INFLUENCE OF UNSUBSTAN-
TIAL " T A F F Y " — W H O WBOTE THE
FIRST JOSEFFY CRITICISM?
DED not furnish for your last is-
sue my regular installment of my
only true confessions, which I am de-
lighted to be informed are attracting
great attention, as I have been trying
to quiet my numerous creditors, for a
time at least. Such people are gener-
ally scum, and I detest them, for they
do not seem to appreciate the fact that
I am paying them an immense compli-
ment in owing them at all. Common
tradespeople, as a rule, know their
place much better in England than in
America, though I must say that I
know to my cost that when a man has
made a pretty heavy run upon them
there, they take up the matter in earn-
est, and make it so deucedly unpleas-
ant for him that he is glad enough to
get away from the country and never
return to it. A man who imposes upon
people in England, and is found out,
cannot go into hiding for a year or two,
and then turn up again as smilingly as
ever to work the very same people a
second time.
I have a favorite theory with regard
to creditors in America, and I find that
it works very well.
Make your creditors bolster you up,
is my motto. Please them with the
idea that if they trust you again, they
will be amply repaid. To show how
confiding people are here, and how well
this is understood by a sharp man, you
«
have only to take up the case of young
Gray, the forger. You will remember
that some years ago he got into a very
bad scrape in Wall street, and caught
some people pretty badly, and yet some
months since he boldly made his appearance in
New York, took offices, and started a bogus elec-
tric light company, using, without authority, the
names of several prominent men as supporters of
his scheme. However, the New York Tribune got
after him, and showed up his plans before he had
time to do much harm. I must say, I think he
went a little too far, for New York bankers and
brokers, at any rate, are a little careful about get-
ting bitten a second time.
Of course, as I intended to establish myself
once more in New York, I was obliged to arrange
matters with my creditors so that they would not
trouble me, and by bestowing upon them a liberal
supply of "taffy," instead of cash, I have succeeded
in fixing some of them.
They are at present living in hope.
Hope is a big thing.
Having staved off some of my creditors, I am
ready again to continue my "Only True Confes-
sions."
I noticed in your last issue that you made up
for my "Confessions" by printing a conversation
which some of your people had with Mr. A. C.
Wheeler concerning an individual the initial
letters of whose name are the same as mine. It
made interesting reading, and I should have
thought the subject of the conversation would have
hidden his face for very shame after he had read it.
I
MISS CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG.
But perhaps you will tell me that this individual's
cheek is so large that he cannot entirely hide his
face.
I believe I was telling you in my last "Confes-
sion" how I could make a great show in a musical
paper with nothing at the bottom of it. Now let
me tell you how I would conduct such a paper in
my present conditiea, after having shown to people
very plainly my vulture-like nature.
In the first place, I would play the martyr. I
would weep, and snivel, and claim that every man
with whom I had associated had done me
grievous wrong.
No. 17
It would be a very good trick, in the case of men
who knew my character thoroughly, and who did
not hesitate to speak of me as I deserved, to claim
that they were base ingrates whom I had raised up
from a condition of abject misery, and who were
only rewarding me by the foulest abuse. This
might have a great effect upon some people who
did not understand my capacity far lying, and who
did not remember that I have been one of the
most abusive fellows that ever put pen on paper.
Why, only to mention one or two instances: I
have called the late Albert Weber a liar in print,
and I am sure that Mr. Joseph P. Hale has
cause to remember the abuse I showered upon
him.
Now, as I owe a number of people in the music
trada for advertising, paid for in ad-
vance, though I suspended the publi-
cation of my paper before I had fulfill-
ed their contracts, I would place their
advertisements in my new paper free of
charge, and then make as much capital
as possible out of the fact that so much
of my advertising space had been taken
up, leading the reader to suppose that
it was ready cash in my pocket, instead
of being an old score, and one not at
all to my credit, that I was working off.
I might devote two pages out of three
to such virtually gratuitous advertis-
ing. Besides the show I could make,
it would give me a fine opportunity to
say, if the trick were discovered,
"Why, I do this because I am an hon-
est man. I am simply carrying out
my honorable instincts."
Of course, I don't mind saying to
you that this is nonsense. You would
not for an instant think that I would
do all this for nothing if I did not
know that upon it depended my only
chance, and a slim one, of getting any
money from my duped advertisers in
the future.
Having arranged my advertising de-
, partment with this display of financial
/
and business ability, I would next pro-
- 1 ' ( ' ceed to develop the literary part of my
paper on the plan that I have already
spoken of in my last issue. A plan very
similar to the one alluded to by Mr. A.
C. Wheeler, when he told in THE MUSI-
CAL CRITIC AND TRADE REVIEW of that
blessed man Freund's way of making a
speculative paper. And here, let me
say, that one of the most effective ways
of "spurting" a musical paper from time to time is
to add new departments to it. The first thing to be
done in this line is, of course, the dramatic depart-
ment, and the time that I should naturally choose
for adding the dramatic department would be
about the first of May, when all the theatres were
closing for their summer vacations.
The brilliancy of this idea will immediately com
mend itself to your most careless reader.
Great as is the demand, on the part of the
American public, for new musical papers, there is
one ardent yearning that surpasses it, and that is
the desire for new dramatic papers.