The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-07-04
For THE ARKANsAw TRAvKLER. DINGDONG ON VOCAL POWER.
BY WADE wH!PPLE.

BY WADE wH!PPLE.
 Some people thought Simon Dingdopg demented; perhaps he was, but his de- mentia was of so interesting a quality that it rarely rubbed up against subject without giving it a burnish that it never seemed to have before. If his style was little singular it was nevertheless re. freshing, for he paraded his thoughts ln phraseology that had its root in Anglo. Saxon. but that often got so far away from parental restraint as to branch out in luxuriance of its own. What he called his pharmacopia of subjects was boundless one, and covered so large an area of information as quite jus tihed his boast that he was not only a latitudinarian but a longitudinarian as we'll" remember getting him lit up on vocal power one day, and this is about the way he went on.
 "Yesl I've heard most of the great warblers from Talliony down to Patti, an while there wasn't one of lem that didn't have larnyx that any martingale might be proud of, yet it seems to me that none of 'em had vocal parts that would iii anything like the same amount of atmosphere that Ned Forests would l think, in fact, do Ned injustice to call his voice vocal part-it was conglom- erous whole, that filled the general ear to that extent that no one ever went away from one of his performances complain ing of the cowsticks of the building.
 "There was nothing mean about Ned. When he got up to tackle an overture, or render an oriole, 1T was a render, you can gamble-there wasn't a note in it that he didn't rend. He didn't stop to think, neither, as some of these primer donners do, about turning on only just so much voice as there was paying audience in the synagogue, but he'd open all the pulmonary tubes and set the wind- pipe gauge at the top notch, and if the deaf and dumb asylums in the rural dis tricts didn't have matinee it wasn't his fault.
 "And speaking of windpipes, guess that was Ned's mainstay. Talk as they will, wind is the reFs 1nskey that imparts boomerang effect to the voice, and if the pipe isn't voluminous, the note: don't balloon out, so to speak. but just flap on your ear like the sag of wet sail. To be sure, this imitation has what they call a retardander effect on the "pianer requirements of the song, but when it comes to the forty parts. why, forty is a mighty small percentage of the amount of voice he'd veneer song with. Pshaw they call Patty the diver; we'll, maybe she is a diver into the pocke.s of the public, but when it comes to diving into the lungs for vocal volume, she doesn't dive one foot where Ned dove ten. Put Old Hundred in her mouth, and the same solo in his, and let them hurl them out together, and you'd think that her performance was about old twenty, and his was old two thousand.
 "Of course, when it comes to running the aromatic scales, and agitating a note through several grades ofparalysis, there's where Patti is just noIens voLens. Her tonsils are set with some sort of ash-sifter attachment tha.ll make sammy-quiver last longer than the Lord ever intended it should, and her tooty-frooty move ments, if they don't exactly reach the soul, will make you feel as if there was something just scratching on the oat- skirts and you was itching to let it in Pm willing to say that much in her favor. But with Ned's voice there was no option at all It had to reach your soul. All | the vocal provisions of Providence were back of it giving it boost-the larnyx, and the pharnyx, and the glanders and | the sarcophagus were all showing it, and no soul of ordinary bulwarks could keep it out. And, according to my tradition and education that's the nHx vomica of vocal vitality-where reach and grandeur to effect an open-sezamus into the solar apartments of every one of Gods eHm .gran0 saIiva.
 
 The Author of "A Stab" To the Editor of THE ARKANsAw TRAvELER