The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1911-09-07
BY ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.

Richmond will be the American
Cremona
So said DIR. Dent Atkinson last weel
from the Chautauqua platform wher
announcing the benefit concert to be
given soon for Alvin B. Clark, this
city's aged violin maker
! Some day Richmond will be famous
as the home of as great maker OF
this instrument as lived in the Italian
town and made 1t known to the world,
continued the speaker.
The death of this master artisan, OF
artist-as you will, for after all. the
creator of the medium through which
musician can pour out his tonal ge.
MUS, should be accounted as much an
artist as the interpreter-was dra.
matte climax to a life, seemingly far
from turbulent
Although who can know the secrets
of the soul. Who can tell what wild
storm preceded the dead calm Who
shall say that the heart is not deep
etched with pain. We cannot know
each other. We nve. each within the
desert isle of his own personality. We
are strangers.
I'VE wear the mask"
Nonetheless. Clark was pictures.
que figure. More than that--he sug-
gested romance. Has any producer of
fiction silhouetted against the fabric
OF his fancy anything more striking
than this old maker Of the most be-
loved instrument of the musician-un-
assuming, silent, concentrated. cru
dite, gentle. but with the pride of a
thousand kings? His was the aristoc-
racy of the brain. Of the fingers. A
representative of the only true aris-
tocracy-the aristocracy of genius
Therefore while touched by the graf
itude and regard of his townsmen who
would do him honor by the public tes-
t1monial on September Fifteenth, he
was yet Inundated A humiliation not
to be understood by any but his kind.
A humiliation suffered through our
false social system which gives the
prize to him who runs the swiftest.
Who hits the hardest Who smashes
the --LATEST. What chance is his of the
sensitive soul? Very little And yet
there may be a flash of human recog-
milton. And SO it was with the violin
maker of Richmond. For a moment he
posed unconsciously in the limelight.
But it was too late.
Last week everyone noticed the ven
cradle figure of Mr.. Clark seated on
the platform at the Bryan meeting. A
worshipper at the shrine of the great
commoner's magnetic personality-for
1t is sheer physical magnetism that is
two thirds of Bryan's hold on men and
bent every waning ply
steal energy to an excursion to the
Chautauqua grounds. For Clark, with
that anachronism which is not ex-
plainable in natures of his sort, was
blindly partisan n matters civic
He did not argue. He knew. Bryan
was his political god. To hear Bryan
declaim on anything was as wine to
his palate. His rapt gaze set upon the
orator had a certain pathos. The pa
thos of those who cling to a belief |
in Immortality. OF the child who be-
ieves he can reach the moon If he |
only stretches his arms high enough.
People noticed Mr.. Clark. You
could hear them say
Did you see Clarke"
We'll Clark seemed to enjoy it."
Did you see Bryan go over and |
shake hands with CLARKE"
1t was curious psychological mani.
;estation.
1t is matter of record that people I
viii see one soon to die, uncannily. A
sudden death-then will those who
perhaps did not know the one snatched