Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1885-01-01
HERE AND THERE.


mechanic as well as musician. He showed
up at the INTELLIGENCER office ON the last
day Of the old year with fiddle Of his own
make that anybody might be proud to turn
out IL was made from wood that he got out
of an old church in Montreal, and the tone of
IL was ~ clear and beautiful ms the finish was
artistic and exquisite "The back and side
ofthe instrument is of maple and the belly
or sounding board-of all iiddcs is of
spruce. That is the wood used for sounding
boards in pianos rs well. No, it does not re-
qriire large pieces. They are glued together
50 rs to have a surface of one grain. In all
there are 90 different pieces in this fiddle"
eyes" added Prof Thorhahn, talking
about the instruments of the old masters,
fiddle is tho correct name for il, not violin.
There are no two, fddles exactly of tho same
tone. There are no fiddle factories in this couu-
try, and no first class instruments are turned
out from factories wholesale by machinery.
They are made. one at time, by hand, just IA
| have finished this one. | can turn out pro
bably two in year between times of nv
regular work and can sell them for $50 apiece.
There are factories in Germany which make
the cheap instruments and ship them here
in great quantities, to sell at from g.. 30 to $40
at retail. Occasionally one may hit on an in.
strument among these of peculiar excellence
and tonc which the appreciative owner soon
finds he could not duplicate aud which he
would not part with for $780, You
take such fiddle--or indeed man NAV
make one himself-one may measure its tone
for weeks most carefully and set about to
make an exact duplicate of il. He may sue
ceed with mechanical precision and to every
appearance there will not he a difference of
hairs breath in any dimension, but when
they are sounded there will be found an in
explicable but manifest difference"
-
This difference" he continued. ..is of course
in some immeasurabe quality of the wood
For this reason the famous old masters of
| Cremona, some of whose secrets died with
them, went up into the woods of Switzerland
for their spruce They took it only from the
| west side of the dead trees, where the expos-
ure To the moisture had been slightest, and
from under the worm eaten outside. They
| had secrets too. of varnish made from dis
solved amber that they left to mono: and
these things, with the excellence that age
brings to all good fiddlos, makes the Gre
| mona instruments of Stradivarius and his
| contemporaries of such value to-day. Ofcourse
| the prices paid for the few genuine instru-
| ments of their make now is fanclful and il
owing largely to their rarity and historical
| curiosity. With years the wood loses more
| and more of its resinous quality and gains
| new and purer tones. A good fiddle with
| good care should never wear ont The last
Cremona sold was purchased by Lord Dun
more and it brought fS,O00: Prince Albert
has one that Paganini started on that is
| worth much"
1t was because the Amati family. and
l,.As.
his pupil Guaneru4 all lived in Gre
mona that the name of that town has be.
come synonymous with IL first-rato fiddle.
In his prelude to ''The wayside Inn" Long,
fellow says:
| The instrument on which he played
| Was in tremOna's workshops made.
| The maker from whose hands IL came
| Had written his unrivRlled name
| ANr"NfUs sTRApIvARICs.
difference in bows? Yes. indeed |,
there. This one you see cost s23 ; and | have
another worth SIS. The wood for them come.
from Pernambuco. South America, and they
are carved out of it with the greatest care tC
| get the exact curve that il needed for the
highest skill and greatest delicacy of touch.
good workmcn needs good tools and the
artist musician wants tho best instruments OF
his art The fiddle strings are made from
sheep gut, as well eat gut, and there is
shoddy among them like in cloths Their,
are several manufacturers of them in thi.
country, but the best fiddle strings still com,
from Padua."
Isn't it about time MARK Twain " left OF
the mountebank business in literature Fl,
disclosed and most successfully worked /
good lead in his Innocents Abroad" Moth
ing like ii had been seen in our literature anC
he has done nothing so good since Indeed
his work has been very uneven, like hi,
| speeches. Some of them are clever and scin
| tillate with real wit; some of them heavy
coarse and bordering ON indeicacy. HI
made money out of his books, married 1
rich wife and has been ndulging all sorts o
quaint tastes and odd fancies. But every one
| OF his later publications shows the CONNER
cial side of literature most extensively. They
are always badly printed and bound and sold
by subscription at about twice a fair price fol
| them.
| His last book " Huckleberry Finn" has
| been advertised i'll the grossest way. First
we had the story telegraphed over the coun,
try that one of the plates had been altered in
| some mysterious way so as TO print an OBJ
scene picture, running a part of an edition
before it was discovered and nearly entailing
upon the author an immense loss bv the
narrow chance of discovery he had hit before
| tDtN NtTt All ! ne tale was WIDELY
published before it was discovered to
have an ancient and fish-like smell, that
| left the reader in doubt whether il was in
tended TO make the first edition of the
| book an object of value to the photographers
| or simply to trumpet the name of the new
! work. Then chapters of it are doed out
| through the magazines, and morsels of il
| dropped to the audiences assembled 10 hear
| the Twain-Cable combination read, write and
sing passages from their authorship-from
| works published and works to appear
shortly, at SIS per volume, sold by sub
| scription only" Finally the news is circu-
! lated that +" Mark Twain has sued for
| AN injunction against Boston house,
| to prevent it advertising to sell his book for
| S2.25, when in fact they cannot do it without
"collusion and conspiracy" with Twain's
| agents by inducing them TO break their con-
| There seems 10 be a heap of baby business
| about the advertisement of - uckleberry
| Finn"-and people are pretty well warned
| by this time that it must bo very poor truck
To need such constant putting and blowing.
| IS
| OF all the books she added TO her library this
Christmas she promptly answered that the
| ones she liked best We're Julian Hawthorne's
! biography of his father and mother the new
| and complete edition of Sidney IAnier's
| poems, with Wards sketch of his life, and
| Geo. w. Cables " Creoles of Louisiana"
| u. ;. None Of them are sold by subscription
| only.
II was the policy of the Democratic Nation
| al committee during the last campaign TO
send no speakers into Pennsylvania and to
draw all out of il that il was possible to inn