The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-06-18

OObtOn JuOlleo.
The inhabitants of Boston were yesterday
startled by the first boom of Gilmores big
drum, but, so far as accounts have reached us,
no serious damage was caused by the storm Of
sound that swept over the city. Fortunately,
due notice had been given, and all the nervous
people had taken the precaution of going to
the seaside in order to escape the consequences
which might have resulted to the delicately
constituted from musical shock. Indeed,
none of the catastrophes which were predicted
have come to pass, and the old Hub, which was
expected to tremble to its foundations by the
latest accounts has not moved an inch. But the
moral revolution that has been brought about
in the manners and habits of the usually quiet
and respectable Bostonians must be ranked
among the strangest phenomena Of our
times. The Hub, which few years ago was
the model of propriety and Puritanism,
turned into modern pandemonium, where
fiddlers, pipers, singers and organ grinders
and folks of that ilk are strangely and won
derfully jumbled together presents scene of
confusion that must make angels weep if
they have any feeling whatever of the fitness of
things. From every cline are gathered bands
into whose composition more or less brass
enters, but oil bent on the common aim of
blowing louder and harder than their neigh
bors, while the whilom subdued and sancti-
monious Hubites shout with mad, unrea-
soning kind of joy. There is something ludi-
crous in this sight of a city of Quaker quiet
suddenly transformed into monster and
monstrous concert hall from which all order
and harmony are absent.
The prime mover and chief cause of this
abandonment of the respectable traditions of
their fathers by the Hubites is wild Irishman
known by the patronymic of Patrick Sarsfeld
Gilmore This verdant youth, before ventur-
ing across the Atlantic, made, it is said, long
pilgrimage to the Blarney Stone, and so de-
voutly did he pay his devoirs to the divinity of
the place that there was conferred upon him
the power to charm man or woman by touch
of the blarney, which renders him irresistible.
Hence the Hubites were unable to resist his
palavering, and in the innocence of their hearts
they admitted his big drum. The grotesque
element in this astonishing transformation
scene is furnished by the versatile and ire
pressible Hibernian who stands out promi-
nently as the foremost figure in this huge
Jubilee humbug. We can picture him perched
like new Quasimodo on his monster drum,
walloping music into the prosaic descendants
of the Puritans, his baton a stout Irish shille-
lab. Surely this is more than Boston counted
on! Was there no Cassandra in the native
town Of blue stockings to raise up
warning voice telling the City Fathers
how fatal Gilmore's scheme would prove
to the cherished dulness of the place? Peace
once broken is fed forever, and Gilmore drum
will certainly bring as much destruction to
the manners of the Hub as did the Grecian
horse to Troy. Henceforth, instead of canny,
sensible men, with slight nasal twang, we may
look out for gangs Of blowing Bostonians,
to whom Barnum may not hope to be cir
cumstance. Gilmore has captured the town,
and, like q modern Eolus, he commands the
Storm at his will cataclysms of sound rush
down on the Hub, overturning and carrying
away all the ancient landmarks. In the future
we shall know Boston as the birthplace of
monster jubilees and storms of sound and
fury signifying nothing, The old town has
fallen into the hands of the musical Barnum
of the age and we can only lament over its
decadence and folly. The City of Sages turned
into the gathering place of windbags is
sorry sight If it were not that the projectors
knew humbug to be eternal and that the bigger
the humbug the more popular it would be likely
to become, they would never have attempted
to get up such row as now gives to Boston
something of the air of Donnybrook Fair in its
palmiest days, minus the shillelah &C.
compartment. Since the South Sea bubble
there has been nothing comparable for
audacity to this huge Celtic joke at the ex-
pense of the staid and sober Bostonians.
Since the building of Babel was, abandoned
more will continue to infict on Boston until
the Fourth of July. We venture to predict
that never was that glorious morn looked for
ward to with half the longing, or its arrival
hailed with half the joy, that viii be felt by the
Hubites this year, because it will free them
from the plague Of Gilmores believing bands.
How delighted the natives will be when they
can once more distinguish the sweet music of
their own nasal twang, which ia just now in.
audible in the present general blowing of
heterogeneous horns! But amid the din may lie
heard the constant rustic of greenbacks, and
this, no doubt, will in some measure comren-
safe the Hub for any loss Of dignity or peace.
Whatever people of aesthetic tastes may think,
those distinguished citizens who keep hotels
are likely to declare the monstrous jubilee o
magnificent success. To them the horrible
discord will doubtless prove the sweetest
music for, though they may not care much
about unisons or harmonies, they will have q
keen and lasting deligh. in the food of green
backs that will be fioated as if by magic on
streams of melody into their strong boxes. We
shrewdly suspect that this accompaniment will
be the feature of the Jubilee which will have