Norwich bulletin., 1915-06-10
MUsIC,AND.PICTUREs

Joan Hall was in the midst of her evenings work. She played the piano at the Lyric a moving picture theatre. She had played there for two years six evenings a week. She earned $6 a week. Days she stayed at home and did the housework and minded her motherless little step sister, while her father piled his trade as shoemaker. They were very poor and that $6 meant a great deal.
 Joan was 19 and if she had had the right food and clothing she would have been pretty. As 1t was she was so slight and colorlesS and forlorn that nobody ever noticed her. She was very glad of this, however, for a good many rough people carne to the Lyric. Sometimes, even as unnotice- able as she was, she felt afraid For the audience. She had to see faces as well as the pictures and often the faces seemed too boldly near. Then she shrank into her shabby black dress and was glad that she had not very far to walk to her home.
 She had grown sick of the pictures. And she was even more sick of the music she pounded out evening after evening. It was not such music as she had once dreamed of making, this jangle ragtime, these popular melodies played, now loud, now soft, according to the action on the screen. Music was her one talent, her one ambition, she felt. Partly by patient practicing on the old piano which had been her mothers, partly by few lessons from a teacher who had seen promise in her. she had reached the point where she could play any ordinary piece of music and play it well. She had hoped to be able to teach, but at particularly difficult time the place at the Lyric had been offered her and c1o ba +olra71 if And tfhern she ha6 remained ever since.
 She had come however, to regard her work as drudgery only possible because it paid. She dreaded the long, muscle and nerve wearing hours at the piano; the fleeing shadows on the screen; the proximity of unwholesome humanity. One night when a tipsy man had made some slight disturb ance she had glanced up in her terror to meet the eyes of a man who sat over against the wall Those eyes had a different look in them from any she was used to seeing-a kindness and honest pity that stirred her He shifted his gaze instantly and she could see that he never glanced in her direction again. After a while
 him. Against the yellow wall his
 dark rough head stood out like a sil
 houette. Tucked under his shoulder
 was a little old woman with hair as
 bright silver. FT6Quently Sne smiled up at him and it came to Joan that the old woman must be his mother.
 After that night he was often in
 the same place, either alone or with the little old woman. Joan never encountered his glance again. She believed he had ceased to be
 aware of her presence, but it com forted her to feel that he was there.
 She never was afraid when he was present.
 Gradually she began to think about him even when she did not see him.
 She wondered who he was and where he lived. She even wondered what he thought of her playing, if he lis tened. She began to weave in betttr music-bits of grand opera, old-fash- toned songs, threads of Beethoven and Greig. One night she played the sextet from Lucia" and lifting her eyes she saw an expression of keen interest on his face. She knew that l he heard. After that she played for him alone. She ceased to be conscious of anything but him. People and pie l lures faded away and she was alone with him, playing for his sake only. Tonight she had known somehow | before she looked to see that he was there and his mother was with him. She played all her prettiest things the Spring Song and Gounod's Ave Maria She played fast, loud things, | too, between, for these were demand