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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW.
IO
BROADWAY GHOSTS,
You (T\ay
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NYM CRINKLE DESCRIBES HIM—HE OWNED A
WEEKLY PAPER, BUT LACKED PRACTICAL
HUMOR—RABELAIS AND MONTE CRISTO
IN ONE — HOW HE HYPNOTIZED
PIANO MEN—A STORY OF A
CASTLE ON THE HUDSON.
^f|jffiR always reminded me of Landseer's big
£&-• Newfoundland dog.
His large brown eyes were so mild and soul-
less and harmless and his dark locks hung down
with such a luxuriant canine curl to them that
you somehow expected to see him shake him-
self, give a great cavernous yawn, and then go
and He down on the hearth rug.
This was when he was couchant, and he al-
ways was after a rampancy of six months.
He had a voice richer than Karl Formes's
ever was, and he could touch a double C with it
that made the glassware tingle.
He was inclined to be portly, and his rich
dark complexion and Semitic face—not to for-
get his Newfoundland dog eyes—made up a
handsome man, who at one moment suggested
a Venetian Jew and at another an English
village landlord.
I saw him sitting there at one of those tables
just now, eating as heartily as ever. I could
almost hear a great bushy tail beating lazily
upon the floor behind him in recognition.
And this man was one of the best editors I
ever saw. I don't think he knew it. He
thought he was an operatic singer. He changed
his mind for some reason and became a financier.
Then he traveled as an actor, and then he took
to writing. He never stayed long at anything.
But, oh, the magnificence of his transit!
He had, in addition to other things, a sense
of humor that ruined him regularly and always
explained everything. I remember he started a
weekly paper, and there was a famous comique
came over here and gave a series of entertain-
ments at Steinway Hall. Our Landseer friend
had had a quarrel with him in London, and so
he engaged the services of some sharp pens to
slate him here in the weekly paper for a paper
boom. The poor comique was grilled profession-
ally, personally, perfectly. The editor expected
him to break out in reply. He never did. He
went quietly to work and bought up all the in-
debtedness of the paper, and one day the pro-
prietor found himself on the walk without lock,
stock or barrel, but he got a crowd round him
and told the story, with imitations, till the tears
ran down the faces of everybody who could ap-
preciate a funny thing.
LACKED PRACTICAL HUMOR.
I said he was a good editor. So he was, bar-
ring this sense of practical humor. He first
conceived the idea of quantity which the great
dailies have since seized upon. He said the
Americans want brains, but they want it in
bulk. They're a commercial nation and their
papers must be like grain elevators (not to say
anything about their establishments). So he
got up the most bewildering weekly I ever saw.
There was no question of its excellence or bulk.
But his sense of humor ruined him. He hired
all the editors in town.
He shook his mane and wagged his tail and
said there was something Gargantuan in it. His
staff was bigger than the Herald's. His salary
list was like a railroad contractor's.
But one day his humor overcame him. He
fell down in the middle of his magnificent
sanctum in hysterics, and before he recovered
the creditors carried off everything. These men
were, as usual, sadly deficient in humor.
Always on these occasions there was a veteran
journalist who rose up and defended him
seriously. I wonder if he does it yet ?
IT SUGGESTED KARL FORMES.
Some of the boys who admired his Landseer
head and Cagliostro school called him " Carlo."
It suggested Karl Formes and the wag at the
same time.
Most men, said he, are too d—d serious in
journalism. They always succeed.
After this some one called his attention to Jay
Gould and other magnates on the east bank ot
the Hudson, and remarked that it was good
Suburban fake. I think he meditated it for a
week or two, for I saw him one day standing in
front of a new pianoforte firm's establishment
trying to size up what it was worth. And the
firm made an assignment six months after.
Probably the attempt to play the role of a Jay
Gould for a year was the climax of all his funny
jokes on himself. He bought one of the finest
castles on the finest peak in Tarrytown. You
can do these things if you've got the girth, the
hair, the wag—without money. Mortgages and
promissory notes will let you in long enough to
work up the fun.
ize a new weekly paper, and some pianomaker
would watch his stomach for a few moments
and then " set him up again."
HYPNOTIZED PIANO MEN.
If he could get that basilisk abdomen fixed on
a piano man, he was (gone. They do say that
once when a deputy sheriff was taking him to
Ludlow Street Jail he prevailed on the officer to
go into a German saloon and take a drink, and
before they came out he had organized a fresh
syndicate and got his notes indorsed. I believe
he made that deputy sheriff an advertising agent
or something.
I have heard this man lecture in public, I
have watched him act, I have seen him swim a
mile out at sea, I have laughed immoderately at
his articles in the papers, I have heard him con-
verse brilliantly with intellectual people and
heard him sing a whole opera through, and then
I have seen him sitting couchant in some Broad-
way kennel, rattling his chain and sleepily turn-
ing his brown eyes on the world with an awful
depth of melancholy in them ; and I have often
wondered if he had been born with less stomach
and more conscience if he would not have done
some good in the world.
NYM CRINKLE,
in the Commercial Advertiser.
APOLUO CLUB
CONCERT.
ABDOMEN AS A FACTOR.
It's astonishing what a factor abdomen is in
these transactions. If he had been a lean man
with a hungry eye, he never could have accom-
plished it. But with his breadth of stomach
and Oriental liberality of face, to which he sud-
denly added an impresario's mustache and a
Rothschild's talma, he could command trades-
men, workmen, bankers and railroad officials.
He took his wife—by the way, he had a wife,
who belonged to the British blonde type—and
went into the suburban thing with a hoop la
that echoed all the way from Pocantico to the
Bronx.
Some of the staid and retired moguls of the
river bank must have thought Rabelais and
Monte Cristo had come back together. Sevres
china, solid mahogany furniture, Moquette car-
pets, English equipages, servants in livery,
sleek roadsters, with a great flourish of Talma
and a roused Newfoundland air over all.
I don't think any of the astonished million-
aires understood the deep sense of humor that
permeated this whole thing. There was some-
thing hilarious in outdoing the whole of them,
with a broad reliance on somebody else doing
the walking when he got through.
For months the vine clad hills of Bingen
shook with the revelry in the castle, and the
Tappan Sea was rippled with currents of admir-
ation. Then one morning they scooped him—
absolutely wiped the moss grown streets of
Tarrytown with him, and the blonde wife had
to borrow fifty cents of a hackman to get to
New York, where she afterward obtained an en-
gagement in a ballet troupe.
RABELAIS NOT IN IT.
Rabelais wasn't in it. Hogarth was a white-
washer by the side of him. I saw him, penni-
less and thirsty, lying not long afterward, so
to speak, before the fire in a cheap restaurant,
but wagging his tail luxuriantly at the recollec-
tion of it. "My boy, " h e said, "they're try-
ing to find some assets yet,'' and then his broad
stomach shook, his brown eyes flashed and grew
moist with mirth, and you could hear the thrash
of his bushy tail.
It would never do on such occasions to throw
in any lamentations or despair. If you did, he'd
get up and shake himself and go out and organ-
f
HE APOLLO CLUB gave its first subscrip-
tion concert this season, on Tuesday eve-
ning, November 21st, and in spite of the severe
storm, the hall was crowded with a fashionable
and appreciative audience. The boxes gave an
idea of an opera night, as they were filled with
fair women in evening costumes, who smiled
their approval upon the fifty Apollos who were
exerting themselves to please, and who decidedly
succeeded.
Most of the numbers on the program were
light and pleasing selections, the most preten-
tious being " King Olaf's Christmas," the solos
sung by Mr. J.*H. McKinley and Dr. Carl E.
Dufft, members of the Apollo. As these gentle-
men are popular church and concert soloists,
their part of the performance was admirably
done. The chorus needed the support of a
larger organ or some stringed instruments, al-
though Mr. Wm. C. Carl, the talented organist,
brought all the tone possible from the Mason &
Hamlin which he had to command.
Mr. W. R. Chapman, the conductor of the
club, is acknowledged to be one of the best
choral conductors in the city, and had excellent
control over his club at this concert. In Gold-
beck's " Break, Break, " Osgood's " In Picardie,"
a little song by Zander, and the Roeder waltz
song, they showed a delicacy of expression and
shading rarely heard in chorus singing.
Miss Priscilla White, of Boston, was the so-
prano soloist. She is a pupil of Miss Munger
(who was Emma Eames' teacher also) and has
a pure soprano voice, which she uses well. Her
rendition of Greig's "Sunshine Song" was
very dainty and effective. With a little more
experience on the concert stage she will be a
valuable addition to the list of successful so-
prano soloists. Miss Bertha Webb was the
violinist and played well, but not brilliantly.
Mr. Emile Levy, as accompanist, did some ex-
cellent work.
KAPP & Co. are successors to E. Fleischmann,
formerly a piano case manufacturer in this city.
They have taken three floors of the old Calen-
berg & Vaupel factory, where they have every
convenience for the manufacture of cases.