The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1896-12-26
THE lMPRoMPTu FIDDLER.
Dance and Experience Musical Sur
prise.

On St. Patrick g day, 1894, five through
westward of the Oregon Short Line
the Union Pacific, were tied up at
Glenn's Ferry, Idaho. They had been
caught between two serious washouts.
one at Pocatello and the other at lnd1an
Greek, three days before, and had to
wait at Glenn's Ferry for track repairs
along the line before they could proceed.
Glenn Ferry is bleak little rallroa
and sheepherders' town Of three or four
hundred Inhabitants, situated on sage
brush bluff overlooking the unspeakably
dark and dreary Snake river, says the
Washington Star.
The five stalled trains carried about six
hundred passengers of as miscellaneous
character as could be gotten together
at carefully selected congress of types.
There were emigrants and millionalres
soldiers on the move; dainty women III
palace cars and women bound for Creede
and Cripple Creek in day coaches; min :
ers who killed times during the walt
in shooting magpies ciroiing over the
Snake river; Shoshone Indians travelling
to the limits of their reservation; well
behaved and quiet people, noisy and tu-
multuous people. But all were stuck
alike, and they made the best OF It,
Lines of social demarcation were Tor
the time erased. All hands mingled cas-
| lily on the little station platform and in
| the little station waiting room. The
supply of food on the dining cars gave
out on the first day of the hitch, and ov-
erybody was fed, and we'll fed, too, In
the station eating room. They sat at the
| tables in relays and patiently awaited
| their turns
The railroad employees and their wives
were to give dance at the little town
| hall st. Patriok's night The switch
man, VINO had been eustomarily EN-
ployed to fiddle for them, had been
switched to another division. In a guam
Diary, the dance committee toured tho
trains and station to ascertain if any of
| the stalled passengers. happened to be
carrying violin and was capable OF pro-
duoing music on it. In one of the Sleep
| ing cars they came across an artistic
| looking man, with very long hair, Sc
raphio oleaginous countenance and ex :
| oeedingly baggy clothes. They were
looking for fiddler, they said. Did be
know Of any on the train? Well, he did
not know lin outrageously bad English)
he played q little himself noe in
WHILE and had rather fair fiddle with
him. The long-haired man accepted the
fiddle' rather curiously. But the rail
road men were overjoyed. Would he
play for them to dance with their wives
and sweethearts? G Certainly 81, Did he
All of the stalled passengers were in
vited to the dance, and they all went. A
good many Of them could not get In.
The baggily clothed fiddler turned up in
good time. The pianist was waiting for
him. So was the railroad dance COM
mittee, one of the members of which
slipped So in one-dollar bills into the i'd
dlsr's hand as payment in advance for
the evenings work. 1t was smilingly
accepted. The dance began. The fire.
mans wife, who played the piano, pro-
duced an old bethumbed violin and piano
tune book. and turned to the lanoers.
She told the fiddler, at the end OF the
first dance, that be did pretty well, only
he went too fast. Then there was waltz.
The fiddler was informed by his accom-
PIANIST that he was getting along finely,
and every body in the room began to
prick up his ears at the sweetness Of the
violin music, although the dances were
common enough and tawdry enough.
Another waltz--the beautiful Blue
Danube" All of the dancers on the
floor stopped dead at the first bar, and
the travellers with cultivated musical ears
moved close to the piano. The pianist
ceased. She wished to listen. The VIC
lin music was miraculous. The player
sw aged from side to side as he phrased.
He appeared to be oblivious of his sur
roundings. He improvised variations of
inspiring tenderness. He out-Straussed
Strauss. His violin sang, throbbed with
passion. When the last note died away
the people in the hall appeared to be
in dream. All but one.
monsieur Ysaye,'' said Charley Fair,
the son of the late United States Senator
Fair, stepping from the throng, "wcn't
you play that lively. rattlina thing you
gave MS at the Bohemian CLUB in San
Francisco the other night? It's been
running liz my head ever since"
NJ. Ysaye played Berlioz's "Pizzicato'
AS he per haps never played 1t before.