The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1906-03-09
The Family Hotel Piano.

| II the piano IN the reception parlOr OF
the family hotel where live and have
my being isn't ennuye and sick of itself
and bored to DEATH" said the depart
ment official who graduated in law here
fourteen years ago, but who is still hold
ing on to the payroll because he can't
think of any place to practise, then its
a piano of Job-like patience and built to
withstand anything that can hereinafter
befall it.
''The things that the one hundred and
fifteen inauguration guests of that family
hotel did to that piano during the three
or four days of their lowering about the
establishment were enough to make any
normal, ordinarily constructed piano
back out of the parlor on its four legs
and take to the wilds of Bladensburg.
The piano was in the hands of the enc
mics of music and the hanky-panks, and
what they didn't do to it could be in
scribed on grain of wheat with a white
washing brush.
Z
engaged in the act of trying to beat that
piano to death for whole afternoon be-
cause couldn't help myself, having been
delegated by the landlady's brother TO
do what | could to look after the COM
fort Of the guests aud when it was all
over went out, deliberately and With
my eyes open to the consequences, and
went downtown and stayed real late, SO
di /.
THE first gay dog to take a wailop at
the piano that afternoon was cut-up
from Point O. Rocks, or some such place,
with a red, white and blue band around
his 1ow-lying soft hat.
"He was acquainted with two tonso-
rial parlor chords, tum- tum- tum, tum
tum- tun, and he loved them with all of
the wild alteration Of his bucoi:c r1idriff.
He handed them to US with heavy pedal
variations for about forty FIVE minutes,
and then he looked around, self CON
sciously, for wild acclaim and tumu!tu
Gus applause.
However, he was edged off the stool
finally by little girl who knew the first
part Of Little Fisher Maiden She
PLAYED the first part seventeen times, and
she kept both OF her feet on the hard
pedal all the time.
THE little girl was succeeded by
Young woman who was familiar with
nearly nine bars of the 'Miserere' from
HTrovatore. This young woman went
into a trance when she began to execute
execute is right-those nine bars, and
she didn't emerge from the trance till she
had da. da po-ed on the composition fully
twenty-seven times. 1t was 'ta-ta, ta-ta
ta-ta, ta-ta'-you remember The first few
bars Of the 'Miserere'-until it began to
seem to me that l had always hated
Verdi and all of his works
"When she came out of her trance,
man who looked like a plumbers helper
figured himself to be the next on the pro-
gramme.
He did left hand obligato-the1e
was nothing doing with his right-by
playing, twenty or thirty times, the last
bar of Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep
-'Tum, tum, tum- tum tum- tum-tun,
daw,' away down to the cellar note,
which he hit with wallop every time as
| if he had a grievance against it. Then
ne started to bawl that last bar
| 'Rawked in thaw crawdawl awv thaw
daw eep." He eventually tumbled to the
| fact that there was long line OF people
waiting to get a chance at the piano,
and then he reluctantly got up and gave
| way 10 a man who knew how to ham,
mer just enough chords to accompany
| his whistling. This man whistied every
thing that came into his head in pierre
ing tone, but, try as he might, he
couldn't whistle hard enough to drown
the din he made with his left hand on the
patient piano.
HE finally, after about an hour, sur
rendered the stool to the girl who remem-
bered her one seminary piece, Monastery
Bells, so thoroughly that she never will
forget it. She didn't play anything else
without her music, she said, but she
played that one piece a,plenty. She
spread herself all over on the few simple
little runs in the piece, succeeding in max
ing them look terrifcally difficult, and
she passed under the wire going strong.
"By this time two or three permanent
guests of the house who were sitting
helplessly around were almost too numb
to protest even to each other, but when
a little man with a bald head and suit
of hard-me-dow that looked as il
they'd been lett out in the rain five nights
running sat down at the piano and be-
gan to inspect the gilt lettered name OF
the instrument with great deal of curl,
osity, one of the permanent guests re,
marked, Now we're going to have some
piano-forte music by a man who appar.
emily never even saw piano before.
Then the little bald headed man II
the suit of hand me downs waded in, and
the way he picked up and ran away witt
the music of Chopin was just caution
to grasshoppers. He just knew the
piano, coming and going, and all ways
from the middle, and when he broke into
superb rendering of the Moonlight
Sonata we felt, somehow, as if wee
been buncoed and were glad fit. He
didn't peek around for any applause
when lie finished treating us. but jus
skiddocd on his way without even turn
ing around.
That settled it for that afternoon
They weren't retiring or bashful lot
but none of them had the nerve to toucl
the piano after that genuine artist, th
bald-headed man, had got through will
it.-W Washington Star.
Tobacco Smoke.