The Monitor-register., 1897-01-08
A FIDDLER WANTED.
HE WAS FAMED AND AT DANCE MUSIC
DID VERY WELL.

Fun and Frolic In a Washout on the Ore
gon Short Iine-Millionaires and Immi-
grants Attend a Dance and Experience
q Musical Surprise.
On st. Patrick's day, 1894, five
through trains, bound both to the east
ward and westward Of the Oregon Short
Line of the Union Pacific, were tied mp
at Glenns Ferry, Ida. They had been
caught between two serious washouts,
one at Pocatello and the other at Indian
Greek, three days before, and had to
wait at Glenns Ferry for track repairs
along the line before they could proceed.
Glenns Ferry is a bleak little railroad
and sheep herders' town Of 800 or 400
inhabitants, situate on sagebrush
bluff overlooking the unspeakably dark
and dreary Snake river.
The five stalled trains carried 600
passengers of as miscellaneous charac-
| 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
ers who killed time during the wait in
shooting magpies circling 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 al 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 we'll fed, too, in the
station eating room. They sat down 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 on st. Patrick's night. The
switchman who had been customarily
employed to fiddle for them had been
switched to another division. In guam
dairy, the 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 it. In one of the
sleeping cars they came across an artistic
looking man, with very long hair,
seraphic, oleaginous countenance and
exceedingly baggy clothes. They were
looking for fiddler, they said. Did he
know of any on the train? Well. he
didn't know lin outrageously bad Eng
lish); he played little himself once in
awhile, and had rather fair fiddle
with him. The long haired man accent
ed the "fiddle" rather curiously. But
the railroad men were overjoyed. Would
he play for them to dance with their
wives and sweethearts? Certainly Did
he know dance music? Well, 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
committee, one of the mem bers of which
slipped So in one dollar bills into the
fiddler's hand as payment in advance
for ths evenings work. 1t was smiling
ly accepted. The dance began. The
fireman's wife, who played the piano,
produced an old bethumbed violin and
piano tune book and turned to the Ian
GERS. She told the fiddler, at the end of
the first dance, that he did pretty we'll,
only he went too fast. Then there was
a waltz. The fiddler was informed by
his acoompanist that he was getting
along finely, and everybody in the room
began to prick up his ears at the sweet
ness 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 pi-
anist ceased. She wished to listen. The
violin music was miraculous. The play
er swayed from side to side as he phras-
ed. He appeared to be oblivious of his
surroundings. He improvlsed variations
of inspiring tenderness. He out-Strauss-
ed Strauss. His violin sang, throbbed
with passion. When the last note died
away, the people in the hall appeared
to be in dream-all hut one.
"M. Ysaye," said Charley Fair, the
son Of the late United States Senator
Fair, stepping from the throng, "won t
you play that lively, rattling thing you
gave us at the Bohemian club in San
Francisco the other nightq It's been
running in my head ever since.''
M. Ysaye played Berlioz's "Pizzi-
cato" as he perhaps never played it be-
fore. Washington Star.