Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1875 — My Experience With the French Horn [ARTICLE]

My Experience With the French Horn

Nothing is more delightful than to have sweet music at home in the evenings. It lightens the burdens of care, it soothes the ruffled feelings, it exercises a refilling influence upon the children, it calms the passions and it drowns out the noise made by the cats in the garden. A few months ago I thought that it might please my family if 1 learned to play upon the French horn. It is a beautiful instrument, and after hearing a man perform on it at a concert I resolved to have one. I bought a splendid one in the city and concluded not to mention the fact to my wife until I had learned to play a tune. Then I thought I would, serenade her some evening and surprise her. Accordingly I determined to practice in the garret. When I first tried the horn I expected to blow only a few gentle notes until I learned how to handle it. But when I put the mouth-piece to my lips no sounnd was evoked. Then 1 blew harder. Still the horn remained silent. Then I drew a full breath and sent a hurricane tearing through the horn. But no music came. I blew at it for half an hour and then I ran a wire through the instrument to ascertain if anything blocked it up.. It was clear. Then I blew softly ana fiercely, quickly and slowly. I opened all the stops. I puffed and strained and worked until I feared an attack of the apoplexy. Then I gave it up and went down-stairs; and Mrs. Adeler asked me what made me look so red in the face. For four days I tackled that horn, and got my lips so puckered up and swollen that 1 went about talking as if I was perpetually trying to whistle. Finally I took the instrument back to the store and told the man that the horn was defective. What I wanted was a horn with insides to it. This one had no more music in it than a terra-cotta drainpipe. The man took it in his hand, put it to his lips and played “ Sweet Spirit Hear My Prayer,” as easily as if he were singing. He said that what I needed was to fix my mouth properly, and he showed me how. After working for three more after- , noons in the garret the horn at last made a sound. But it was not a cheering noise. It remined me forcibly of the groans uttered by Cooley’s horse when it was dying with blind stagge.rs last November. The, harder I blew the more mournful became the noise, and that was the only note I could get. When I went down to sapper Mrs. Adeler asked me if I heard that awful groaning. She said she guessed it came from Pitman’s cow, for she heard Mrs. Pitman say yesterday that the cow was sick. For four weeks I could get nothing out of that horn but blood-curdling groans; and meantime Cooley shot at me twice while I was at the garret window, thinking I was a wandering ghost. The people over the way moved to another house because our neighborhood was haunted, and three of our hired girls resigned successively for the same reason. 1 Finally a man whom I consulted told me that “ Nelly Bly” was an easy tune

for beginners; and I mr^ e eflort to learn it. After three weeks cjf arduous practice, during which Mrs. Xdeler several .times suggested that it Vas brutal that Pitman didn’t kill that 'juffering cow and put it out of its I conquered the first four notes cj the tun g but there I stuck. I could p\ay “Nelly Bly shuts ” and that waj all. I performed “Nelly Bly shuts —over 8,000 times, and as it see,med unlikely that I would ever learn tiie whole tune I determined to try the effect of part of it on Mrs. Adeler. About ten o’clock one night I crept out to the front of the house and struck up. First, “ Nelly Bly shuts ” about sisteen or twenty times, then a few of those groans, then more “ Nelly Bly,” and so forth. Then Cooley set his dog on me and I suddenly went into the house. Mrs. Adeler had the children in the back room, and she was standing behind the door with my revolver in her hand. When I entered she exclaimed: “ Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come home! Somebody’s been murdering a man in our yard. He uttered the most awful shrieks and cries I ever heard. I was dreadfully afraid the murderers would come into the house. It’s perfectly fearful, isn’t it?” Then I took the revolver away from her (it was not loaded and she had no idea that it would have to be cocked), and went to bed without mentioning the horn. I thought, perhaps, it would be better not to. I sold it the next day, and now I am looking for a good hand-organ. I know I can play on that.— Max Adeler, in N. Y. Weekly.