The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-03-28
MUSIC MOVES STRANGELY
 AND SOMETIMES RAPIDLY
By IRWIN S. COBB.

came into this country or else lodged the
 customs officials by crouching down be-
 hind his own jungle. He certainly was
 the walking argument against a low
 tariff on raw products. Anyway out he
 came and bowed very low and ran his
 hands through his acreage a couple of
 times so 1t all stood up straight like d
 maiden hair fern in pink dish. Then he
 turned up the piano stood to the right
 pitch after considerable trouble and sat
 down and got up and spun her round and
 tuned her up some more and sat down
 again and wiped his hands on a handker-
 chief that looked like silk to me and
 hurled it from him with a great disregard
 to expense, and then he shut his eyes and
 leaned forward and several of the true believers said 'Sh-h-h', like that, and we were off.
 i ''He started gently, I'll say that much
 for him. First he leaned away over and 1 pushed two of the trebles a couple of l gentle little nudges 'tappy-tappy,' like a 1 second-story man tiptoeing across a tin i porch roof with goloshes on, and then he l swung south and bumped two of the l passes 'bummery- bummery," away down deep, like an indigestion symptom But then without waiting to give the piano d pepsin pellet or massage it's abdominal
 wires, he came sliding in home from third, tore off two hang nails on the middle key
 with loud rending sound and grabbed
 the poor thing by the upper lip and tried to pull all her front teeth out by the
 roots. l thought that was going pretty
 far, but he'd only started. All of sud- den he gave a convulsive start, and tore
 down to the corner and turned in a call
 for the entire department. Almost in stantly intense excitement began to reign All you could hear was the engines com , ing, and one of the hook and ladder mil it through the front window of tinware store and a lot of chemicals exploded In the basement and at that, flames burst out from the windows and people began
 to jump out of the upper stories with cooking stoves in their aTms-I counted
 no less than 15 Charter Oak ranges strik- ing the sidewalk before l lost tally-and
 a side wall fell, burying many people in the ruins and their shrieks were pitiful to hear, and one of the ambulances ran
 away and crippled dog. The programme
 called 1t a Bach fugue. But you can't fool me; l know third alarm when 1 hear one.
 "The holocaust lasted for 20 minutes, as near as 1 could tell, and was attended by great loss of life and suffering But after our Polack friend got the ruins damped down, he went back behind the scenes to 1 take off his slicl1er and helmet and put on his running trunks to do a Mozart Marathon Tn the second half. After the applause had died out and all was quiet except for the gasps of the exhausted in- strument, which was leaning back on it's launches panting like a lizard, and as l reached for my hat the lady sitting
 next to me leans over and says to me
 she had bad teeth and she'd undoubtedly been doing up her hair with an egg
 beater, but anybody could tell at a glance
 she had one of those temperaments you fry n -yO cha she says:
 Excuse me, sir for addressing a stranger, but l could tell that you were also deeply affected. An, me, music moves one strangely
 'Yessum, l Says, Tt moves me strangely too, not to say rapidly. And l if you'll sit right still, ma am and watch
 me, you'll be able to see me moving And 1 1 came away.
 "I guess the trouble with me is, Larry. ] that I've been having too much music
 lately. If l go into regular restaurant they insist on backing me up so close to l the orchestra leader that we're both wear 1 ing practically the same pair of suspen- l ders and the clarionet instrumentalist 1 blows down my neck until I'm so tickled l l can't eat. Sometimes l like those Be- ! hemian eating places where if 1 spill l some of the red wine on my shirt, can 1 walt until it dries and then brush 1t off. 1 without leaVlnS any stain. But as sure
 as l go out into one of them a troupe l of bushy Italian bandits in green velvet , coats and wide red abdominal bandages,
 issue forth from behind the potted palms. | armed With their national weapon the !, guitar, and gathering in a bunch just 1 outside my ear they render that famous l Sicilian ballad, Come Into the Garlic. Maud, until I'm gibbering maniac. I Now, on the other hand, if a good l looking girl comes out in a white dress l and rose in her hair and sings, Tn the 1 Gloaming just dry so, I can get a lump | in my throat that makes me remind my ] self of a blue racer trying to swallow a
 china alarming egg. But l don't care deep l ly for Male Quartet that rest their
 heads on one another's shoulders and an-
 nounce that My Lady Sleeps in tone | of voice which makes it dead moral 1 certainty that my lady won't sleep wink
 unless she's lucky enough to be in bed i over in the next ward
 T used to like John Philip Sousas line
 of stuff, too, l liked the way John Phil