The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1882-02-16
A Short-Lived Triumph.

The Grand opera. house at Newtown
was crowded, from the undesirable stu
ations Immediately behind the orches-
tral stand up to the still less desirable
quart ers, 10 be secured for d tri6ing sum,
in the lofty elevation of the fifth gallery;
that gallery built and reserved in ante
-bellpm days Tor the slaves who attended
their masters hiLhor, but now only
: pe9Plcd, .%hen,-ip the attraction ofpop-
ular favorite or rising star it was peo-
pied at all, by tho slaves of that harsh.
est, most severe of all masters-impe-
curiosity.
The pa, quette and dress circle held,
IS usual, representatives of the wealthy,
more cultivated and richly dressed in
habitants Of the city, most of whom
had come here, as they went elsewhere,
merely to vile away an idle hour, and
were as YEARLY Indifferent to the throb-
bing heart pulses of the exquisite
melodies as they were to all else in
life. except their own qualification.
But in The less aristocratic, lower.
priced positions. an oddly contrasting
clfss to tlase spoiled children, nause-
ated with sheir own good fortune, had
tonight found its way. Men to whom
the price OF this evenings indulgence
meant Gay of hard, min
terrupted labor; women to whom these
short two houls of respite from care
and very in novel surroundings and
under the exciting influence of the mu.
steal strains was arevelation, an episode
to he remembered through all the
coming Years, and alluded to as, "That
evening when / went to the OPERA
house," and lf-grOwn youths and
maidens to whom the whole seemed like
poetical dream of fairy-land, from
which they must soon awaken to the
dull prose of their daily lives, with only
fierce resolution beating itself into
heart and brain to get back into this
blissful life to do something, to be
somebody
These members OF the middle class,
these men, women and children, who
in intellect and nature were on par with
their richer, highly-favored fellow
mortals in the upper seats at this won
drous banquet of sound, but who had
been crushed and bent down to lower
level-by the iron heel of poverty, had
drunk in the musical strains from the
first low notes Of the orchestral selec.
tion, down through the intervening
numbers on the delicately scented pro.
gramme, with an unquenchable, ever.
increasing thirst, until now,, as the
third number from the close was al
hand, their excitement reached its .cul-
mination, and forgetting all their trou,
BILE and pain they glanced first at each
other with smiling lips and flushed
radiant faces, and then back to the
stage with eager, expectant eyes to
watch forthe first appearing the even.
ings debutante-the young violinist.
And then she came-a radiant vision,
in sheeny silk and huttering, cloudy
lace this girl who had dwelt among
these poor, hard working people-noW
watching her with such breathless in
terest, since the early days of her child,
hood, whose sunny face and CHEEKY
laughter had been to them all, in their
distress, as the suns own cloud-dis-
persing beams whose wonderful music
had SO often poured forth for them, now
a merry roundelay to heighten the
mirth of wedding or festival now a soft,
mournful strain to carry balm to griev.
lug SOul OIs dBdluj CIOOHlHS lul-
laby to still the sobbings of some fret
full child.
sour musician" they had called her,
with evident pride in the possession,
since the time when the small hands
had first drawn the slumbering harmony
from her fathers priceless instrument
and had watched the budding genius
as it put forth leaf after leaf, form
ing the gracious flower that now could
could give delight to all who gazed
upon it.
All this had been the work of time
however. More than fifteen years had
elapsed since the day when the father
himself a gifted German artist, mad
dened by jealousy and the unfaithful
ness and harsh criticisms of erstwhilt
friends, bitter to death against q rival
violinist whose fame soon threatened tc
eclipse his own, and crushed by the
loss OF his young wife, had seized the
two treasures still left to him-his two
year old child and his yiolin-and will
them had fed away from all old associa
tions and buried himself in one of tn,
obscure streets of an American city.
Here he had eked out a scanty pit
tance by teaching his mother tongue t.
those who would learn, and here h
trained his daughter, his one musi