The Paducah sun. [volume] (Paducah, Ky.) 1898-1906, 1903-03-18
FINE "OLD" RIDDLES
The Date on Them Fools
Great Many People.
Some Of the Cheapest Instruments
Have the Oldest Dates and
Are Worthless.
CROP OF SUCKERS LARGE

Every time you pick up paper you
see where Jim johnson, Glenn Smith
or some one Of equal Importance in
this or that village has discovered that
he owns some wonderfully old violin,
made away back before the Indians
were we'll away from New York, Bos-
ting and other present centers of civil.
lization. They know it was made
then because it has the date in it.
This is one Of the most ridiculous Of
the many humbugs practiced on the
unsophistioaled and believed by the
American people, Musicians laugh It
these "old" violins. If there were as
many old ones as you read in the pa
pers about, Pierpont Morgan with all
his wealth couldn't pay for half Of
them.
The fact is that two.thirds or more
Of these supposed old violins are not
worth 90 piece. They were turned
out BY the bushel in some yankee fac
tory, AMI the dates ere put in there
principally to indicate what the model
of the instrument is, and incidentally
to make the unsophisticated think he
has secured valuable old instrument
Violins have models, just as bicy-
Giles, typewrlters and other things. A
violin might be "Strad" in pattern
and have l647 inside Of it, as many of
the cheap ones do, but it wouldn't
mean that it was made by stradiyarius
in that year. 1t might simply mean
that IL was an imitation of violin OF
that make and model. People gener-
ally do not seem TO know this, how
ever, and when one man hobs up with
one of these "fine old instruments"
and has piece put in the paper about
it, his envious neighbor looks at the
date pasted on or burned in his, and
then goes and does likewise, aud in
this way every cheap old fiddle in the
country is paraded before the public
as one of those lost gems of the long
dead violin maker, until the crop has
become enormous.
The writer once had three violins
that cost less than $40 for the whole
bun,h and one was made according
to the date inside) about 1892, the
year Columbus came over, while the
others were made before the Nine
teenth century was certainty.
One was sold BY man who told
remarkable story about its having
been pawned by an aged musician and
bought by him for song The date
inside convinced the writer that he
was getting a gold mine for nothing,
and not until after he had parted from
his good, hard. Learned So. so did he
learn what q fool he had been. Later
on he was picked out as q good thing
and SOLD haunted" fiddle. 1t had
been in a mysterious family, and must
have witnessed something in the dim
unwritten past. as it had the reputa-
tion OF screaking andmoaning constant
ly at night. 1t made such peculiar
noises that one owner became fright
ened one night, pitched it outside and
left it to be carried away by neigh-
Dor.
1t also had a prehistoric date inside
aud the writer was glad to buy it.
The peculiar noises" turned, out to
come from the cheap wooden keys.
which expanded and contracted with
the temperature and humidity, and the
strings being tight the tension would
cause the keys to slip and make un-
earthly noises. IL was said, however,
that at least half dozen people had
at various times refused TO keep the
instrument in the house because it
was haunted. A new set of keys
forever banished the peculiar noises,
AMI made the fiddle worth at least S4.-
IS, date and all.