Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 250, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1920 — SEEMED LIKE AN IMPOSITION [ARTICLE]

SEEMED LIKE AN IMPOSITION

Parvenu Couldn't Understand Why Musician Hadn't Come With Instruments Tuned. * —— Herman Finck, the noted English composer, tells the following amusing story of a somewhat ambitious attempt of a member of the newly rich to grasp matters musical. He said: “My grandfather used to direct a small orchestra of about half a dozen, which could be hired for dances, parties and weddings, and even (on one occasion only) for funerals, but that’s another yarn. Well, the orchestra one night made its appearance at the house of the type of parvenu we should call nowadays- a war profiteer. The guests were assembled and the fiddlers and so on were crowded up in the usual corner with the ferns and things. Suddenly the host approached.

“ this horrible noise you’re making?’ he said. ‘Rotten piece, I call.lt I* ( “ *This isn’t a piece,’ replied my grandfather; ‘we’re tuning up, that’s all.’ ‘“Tuning up? I engaged you over two months ago, and you’re tuning up nowT"