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THE
MUSIC TFADE
VOL. LXI. N o . 14 Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill at 373 Fourth Ave., New York, Oct. 2, 1915
CENTS
HERE do men get the most out of life, in.the great cities or in the smaller towns where
their personality is well known and where people pleasantly meet and call each other
by their first names?
During my travels in all parts of America I have always observed that spirit of
humanness in the smaller towns, and I am of the belief that men who reside there get more real
happiness out of life than those who are a part of the rushing multitudes in the great cities, where
men have hardly time to exchange greetings when they meet on the street, so intent are they upon
the race for business and for success.
And what does it all amount to, this unceasing grind? After all is the race worth the price of
this g rinding crush, this eternal grind, this mad scramble for position and dollars?
I think some are paying too high a price for their temporary gains. They are paying not only
the price of health but of happiness for the tawdry things of life which show their shallowness when
once possessed.
What does it matter whether a man can buy a few more pictures, yachts, automobiles, horses
or plunges deeper into follies and vices of various kinds?
The strife of keeping up appearances—of making money to maintain a position necessary in the
great city, sometimes takes the best out of a man.
It takes too much and returns too little.
Who has not felt the lonesomeness of a great city! Who has not felt the grimness, tenseness
and mercilessness of the strife which exists where the teeming millions pour forth daily, amid the
canyons of brick and stone which traverse our modern cities!
I have watched at the gateway of our great metropolis where the human stream pours in every
morning to take up the burdens of the day. I have watched the crowd stream toward home at night
tired and pathetic. I have walked on thoroughfares of the city where the vast aggregations of
humanity meet and pass, and I have often been amazed at the selfishness, the coldness, the artifi-
ciality of it all.
Hawthorne said that there is no place on earth where a stranger may find himself so utterly
companionless and desolate as in London, and what applies to London applies equally to New York,
for in the heart of every great city there are lonesome people, who never see a hand outstretched to
welcome them, whom nobody seems to care about, and who must be satisfied to live their lives alone.
Someone has suggested that the lonely ones should each wear a button on which would be
inscribed the words: "I am lonely." Thus would these victims of solitude be brought into communion
with others just as lonety as themselves.
It is said that the man who loves solitude must either be a monster or a god. This is an aphorism
of an excessively gregarious mind.
It might indeed be safely asserted that nobody can ever be lonely who can enjoy the silent but
congenial companionship of books and of music. A man who can play should never be lonesome.
That fact should be impressed upon the boys in their youth. Sometimes I think we are forgetting
the charms of music. It was Montaigne who wrote concerning his library:
" Tis there I am in my kingdom, and there I endeavor to make myself an absolute monarch,
and to sequester this one corner from all society, conjugal, filial and civil; elsewhere, I have but
W
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