Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 February 1914 — PLAYING VIOLIN WITH TOE [ARTICLE]

PLAYING VIOLIN WITH TOE

Scrutiny of Audience Would Cause Some Degree of Embarrassment, as Well as Inconvenience. Bacon—l see it is reported in for* eign dispatches that a violinist who lost the fourth finger pt his left hand has had it replaced by the second toe of his left foot. He has now resumed playing his favorite instrument, it Is said, and does so with apparently littie embarrassment. Egbert—Of course, we all know that some men have kept better time with their feet than certain musicians have with their hands, and we have known instances when a man's toes have moved in harmony with his feet, but the question naturally arises at this crisis, can a man keep as good time with one toe as he can with five, especially when the scene of operations is transferred from his underpinning and annexed to his paw? Of course, the musician in question may play without embarrassment, but it seems to me, who has never tried it, to bring the second toe of my left foot into the limelight and try to play “Qld Black Joe” with variations on a fiddle, conscious that the particular toe was being scrutinized by a wondering audience, would not only cause some degree of embarrassment, but, I must say, inconvenience.”