New Britain herald., 1925-11-21
THE OBSER VER- Makes Random Observations
 On the City and Its People

hard coal furnaces and ranges must be re-adapted; semianthracite, semibituminous or soft coal under any other name, makes more dirt, is more disagreeAble to handle, burns with more or less smoke and gas and
 requires more draught than many stoves now have. It also requires more stoking an1 the dangers of coal gas escaping in the home are great CT Soft coal is n good supstitutc and to teach the periodical strikers a much needed lesson, it would be good thing for New England to fol- low the footsteps of the vest and burn it; but as Q substitute for an- thracite II at it's best is inferior.
 Did you feel that? What was it? Another earthquake? It seems that Connecticut people are coming 10 vision an earthquake every time a truck goes by. q blast is exploded, or the plumber upstairs drops his hammer. If you tell man 1t was not an earthquake, you are practi- .cally committing suicide, for tremors are so rare hereabouts that a fancied shivor becomes very precious and a man will fight for his illusion.
 Throw a rock against house and the dwcllers therein will claim it's a quake; how different from Cali fornia, where the great disaster of 1906 is still spoken of only as the fire."
 Causes of earthquakes are num- erous, scientists tell us, slipping of earth strata, filling of subterranean caves, breaking tension of rock and so on. Landslides also cause them -sce how the Davis landslide in i 1924 caused McAdoo to vanish as If the earth had swallowed him. We imagine very fat person falling doWnstairs would create tremor as violent as has been felt yet in New Britain. And the blows on the head suffered by comic-strip characters are certainly sufficient 10 make city quiver.
 As for results, they are well known big holes are opened in the ground the landscape is rearranged, church steeples are cracked, buildings col lapse, and the city is wrecked as badly as was New Britain High eleven last Saturday. Perhaps an earthquake is responsible for those bulging house walls on West Main street. A charitable person might blame an earth shock for the holes in the streets about the city, only New Britain has never had one hard enough to do such damage.
 Anyway, what good is an earth quake? They give newspapers a chance to dust off the big capitals, they offer novelists and motion pie ture scenarists basis for alleged thrillers, the movie news weeklies. all obtain exclusive scoops, and hitherto dissatisfied homesteaders can thank their gods that for once they are off the beaten trail of events. In war, really good quake might dig an army's trenches, but during peace periods they are stupid things and. braggarts who "feel' them to the contrary, we , could better get along without them. Yet a convulsion which opened a crack across the Harvard ten-yard line this afternoon and prevented Yale from scoring would not be un- welcome to followers of the Crim- son.
 The New Britain Musical club had its first house meeting of the season the other night and tried to settle the fate of ultra modern music. Maybe you don't know what ultra modern music is like? Well, if you live long enough you will learn. It isn't jazz and 1t isn't classic. It is combination of everything. I'm pressionistic"--th the word. By the time the local musical club got through argufying about it the clock had crept up on the midnight hour and every single individual participant had won a great victory leach according to his lights.
 The illustrations were what Is known as apropos. For instance: There was the playing of Richard Strausss symphonic poems Death and Transfguration," and Till Flu lenspiegel's Merry Franks" They were given complete on the phono- graph, the London symphony orches- i tra thus being heard.
 The former was played in New | York for the first time in 1897, and the speaker of the evening told how the critics described it as positively indecent, and as a laboratory test. It is program music par excellence,
 and here's the gruesome story:
 A gentleman lies on his death-bed the music begins softly but Qmin-
 ously. His heart beats are heard on the timpani. A cuckoo clock in the hall cuckoos. The poor man begins to think of his youthful days. The orchestra sets up a love theme. But
 this in interrupted by the desire to
 live and the patient goes into con-
 Vulsions-the orchestra likewise. His
 heart beats are heard when he is ex- hausted and the turmoil dies down. He thinks of his heroic days-and
 the orchestra plays a heroic theme,
 suggesting soldiers on the march.
 An interruption; convulsions again.
 A theme of fate appears in the
 trombones. His heart beats grow
 louder. The orchestra runs into a
 terrible furore, as if the man is at
 tempting to get out of bed in his
 frenzy. He falls back exhausted;
 the clock cuckoos again, and he
 gradually becomes resigned to his
 fate and a beautiful resignation
 theme" appears. But the will to live remains, and he again goes into
 frenzy-the orchestra ditto. And
 after a wild time his heart beats arc heard on the trombones, and they grow slower and slower, and then death fhe orchestra sipnifVing this