The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1882-05-19
Surgery and Music.

Perhaps science is advancing little
too rapidly. The surgeons have just
discovered that by severing o tendon
the third finger of the hand may he per-
mitted to acquire greater facilities in
playing upon the piano. 1t has been
recognized that something or other was
the matter with the great mass Of piano
players in this suffering country, Men
who have spent In anguish the long
hours which the girl next door devoted
to what she called ''practicing," have
felt that frightful obstruction of one
kind or another would have to be sur
mounted before she could decently char
acterizc as music the sounds evoked
from the instrument. That tendon is
now alleged to have been the cause OF
tho difficulty. But there is room for
reasonable doubt if it is responsible for
the whole of tho trouble. There are
exasperated persons capable of limiting
darkly that q surgical operation which
does not remove the brains of the aver
ago player and supply improved ones,
will fail to effect reform. The pres
ence in tho hand of that restraining ten
don really seems to suggest that Nature
intended that girls and men should not
play upon the piano. There is no ten
don to restrain people from making pies
or from saving wood. The things that
the hand was designed to do it can do
without being sawed and reset. Out
ragged Nature mutely protests against
the murder of "The Maiden's Prayer
and of variations of airs from Patience
by the millions of hands that struggle
through these compositions with ineffec-
tive third fingers. The surgeons have
now como to set the fingers free from
the restraints of beneiicent Nature, and
to give them facility" This seems to
mean that two vigorous fingers are to be
added to every pair of hands that are al
ready engaged in banging the piano:
There are men who have listened
through weary days of pain to the eff
fects produced by tho six fingers and
two thumbs of the practicing girl, who
will thirst for tho blood of the surgeon
who found that no could increase that
finger power twenty-five per cent.
There is, however, q CLEAN of hope.
The well-known and especially offensive
young man who imagines that he is
learning 10 play upon tiio mus may coh-
ceive tho notion that tho defective con-
struction of his windpipe is responsible
for his failures, and he may persuade
somebody to operate upon that organ
with carving knife. There are always
compensations. The man who deceives
himself with tho notion that he can sing
tenor, and who is burden to his rela-
tives and friends, may imagine that the
construction of his lung is faulty and
may have an incision into itmadc. Thus
persons of his class may gradually be
thinned out and tho lives OF the rest OF
us made happier. And as the fashion OF
improving upon nature by use OF the sur
geon's knife gains Roadway blessing
may come even to editors. The deprav-
ed people who attempt to write humor,
Gus articles may conceive that they will
gain by having their funny bones cut
into, and so will be crippled for life.
This, however, is but faint hope. The
stupidcr a man is the more thoroughly
is he convinced, generally speaking. that
no can express himself in an amusing
| manner uOOn paper.