Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1897-03-03
A FIDDLER WANTED.
HE WAS FAMED AND AT DANCE MUSIC
 DID VERY WELL.

gun and Frolic In a Washout on the Ora
 gon Short -NIillionaires and Imni-
 grants Attend Dance and Experience
 Musical Surprise.
 On St. Patrick's day. 1894. five through trains, bound both to tho east ward and westward of the Oregon Short Line of the Union Pacific, were tied up at Glenns Ferry, Ida. They had been caught between two serious washouts one ct Poeatello and the other at Indian Creek, three days before, and had to wait at Glenns Ferry for track repairs along tho limo before they could proceed. Gienns Ferry is q bleak little railroad and sheep berders' town of 800 or 400 Inhabitants, situate on a sagebrush bluff overlooking the unspeakably dark and dreary Snake river.
 The five stalled trains carried 600 passengers of as miscellaneous a charae, ter as could be gotten together at carefully. selected congress of types. There were emigrants and millionaires: soldiers on the move; dainty women in palace cars and women bound for Creede and Cripple Creek in day coaches; min. CTS who killed time during the wait in shooting magpies circIing over the Snake river; shoshone Indians travel ing to the limits of their reservation; we'll behaved and quiet people, noisy and tumultuous people But all were stuck alike, and they made the best of it.
 Lines of social demarcation were for the time erased All hands mingled easily on the little station platform and in the little station waiting room. The supply of food on the dining cars gave out the first day of the hitch, and every. body was fed, and well fed, too in the station eating room. They sat down at the tables ill relays and patiently awaited their turns.
 The railroad employees and their wives were to give dance at the little town hall on St. Patrick s night. The switehman who had been eustomarily employed to fiddle for them had been switched to another division. In quan dary, tho dance committee toured the trains and station to ascertain if any of the stalled passengers happened to be carrying a violin and was capable of producing music on 1t. h one of the sleeping cars they came across on artistic looking man, with very long hair, seraphie, oleaginous eountenanoe and exceedingly baggy clothes. They were looking for q fiddler. they said. Did he know of any on the train? Well, he didn't know Gin outrageously bad Eng lish); he played little himself once in awhile, and had rather q fair fiddle with him. The long haired man accent ed the fiddle" rather curiously. But the railroad men were oyerjoyed. Would he play for them to dance with their wives and sweethearts? Certainly Did he know dance music? We'll, some.
 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 committed, one of the members of which slipped $8 in one dollar bills into the flddler's hand as payment in advance for th9 evenings work. It was smiling ly accepted The dance began. The freman'9 wife, who played the piano, produced an old bethumbed violin and piano tune book and turned to the lam eers. She told the fiddler, at the end of the first dance, that he did pretty well, only he went too fast Then there was q waltr. The fiddler was informed by his aceompanist that he was getting along fiaely, and everybody ill the room began to prick up his cars at the sweet ness og tho violin music, although the dances were common enough and tawdry enough.
 Another waltz-the Beautiful Blue Danuhe. All of the dancers on the floor stopped dead at the first bar, and the travellers with cultivated musical ears nloved close to the piano. The pi. anist ceased. She wished to listen. The violin music was miraculous. The play CT swRyed from side to side as he phras- ed. lle appeared to be obliytous of his surroundings. He improy1sed variations of inspiring tenderness. He out-Strauss- cd Strauss. His violin sang, throbbed with passion. When the last note died away, the people in the hall appeared to be In a dream-all but one.
 ''NT. Ysaye." said Charley Fair. the son of the late United States Senator Fair, stepping from the throng, wont you play that lively, rattling thing you gaya us at the Bohemian club in San Francisco the other night? It's been running in my head ever since. ?
 M Ysaye played Berliozs "Pizzi oato' as he perhaps never played it h' fore. Washington Star.
 The Du Bzaurier Woman.