The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1911-12-18
THE new CARUSO IS
AN AMERICAN BOY
HAROLD WHO SANG WHILE DELIVERING coFFINs MUNcE,
INDIANA, HAILED LONDON CRITICS.

When Orville Harold now being
hailed in London as one of the worlds
greatest tenors, was hauling collins
from the local casket factory at Mum
Gle, Ind, to local undertaking estab-
lishments or to trains for delivery out
of town, he sang at his work, and
many were the comments of a humor-
| GUS kind, passed upon the boy who
could get song and sunshine out of
surroundings so somber.
But that was not unusual for him
this singing.
When he was a plow-boy near the
little hamlet Cowan five miles of Mum
Gle, and he had no audience save his
plodding horses or the birds that twit-
! tered in sympathy from the neighbor-
ing trees, he sang and the country
folks said Of him, NO good will ever
come OF that Harold boy He wants
to sing all the time instead Of work"
Hut his employers said that his work
was not neglected because he was
singing
Then, a mere boy himself. he mar
ried one Of the country girls of the
neighborhood, and in order to meet
/ increasing responsibilities moved to
Muncie, where he obtained a position
as driver of delivery wagon for the
casket company.
You mustn't sing while delivering
| coffins,' he was enjoined, but he sang
anyway. Finally the grewsomeness
of his job manifested itself to him and
he left the casket factory to take
position as deliveryman for Muncie
grocery.
And still he sang while delivering
potatoes and eggs and flour and sugar
to the grocer's customers. The spirit
of song was in him and mere environ
ments could not suppress it.
One day. while he was unloading,
| from the familiar pine box, an order
of groceries in the kitchen of a custo-
mer, he heard a young woman of the
household playing upon the piano a
| classical air whose words he knew.
While placing upon the kitchen table
! the groceries he began singing in an
undertone and attracted the attention
| OF the woman whose daughter was
playing, and she invited him to the
parlor.
So, without ado, attired as he was
in overalls and jumper and carrying
in his hand his battered SLOUGH hat,
the young delivery man who was earn
ing nine dollars a week and glad of it
because it meant a living for his wife
and baby went into the parlor where
grand piano was being played, and
sang as never before had anybody
sung in that house, used as it was to
the recitals of the city's musicians.
Then Harold recalled that as a
mere boy, before the adolescent stage
had been reached, his voice had at
tracted the attention of a Muncie mu-
stefan at whose suggestion an enter
tainment bureau had taken the lad to
Chicago, where he appeared in con-
cert for few weeks. Soon after
wards his voice began changing and
it was no longer soprano, but a clear,
high tenor of great range and unlim-
tied power, but of magnetic sweetness. !
While for the early discovery" of |
Harold as a boy soprano, a Muncie
newspaper and Prof. Ernestinoff. the
Indianapolis orchestra director. may
be entitled to credit, equal credit like
~ is due to Madame Schumann- Heink.
1t was something like five or six years
ago when the great diva, who was
appearing at Muncie in an opera,
granted Harold an audience at his
request.
At the conclusion of his singing. !
she said: He has one of the most
wonderful voices to which have ever
listened Whereupon she agreed to
send him to Europe at her own ex-
pense to have his voice cultivated.
Harold thought the matter over
and every fiber of his being longed to
accept the gracious offer until he re-
membered the wife and the baby
whom, he feared, he could not support
as student. So reluctantly, he went
back to the life of the deliveryman,
but with a determination to succeed,
some way, in spite Of financial diff
culties.
After years of varying fortunes for
Harold, Oscar Hammerstein came
along and signed the young man for a