Sympathetic Painter

1895

The language of hints is Greek to children, as a rule, and they interpret it after a simple fashion of their own.

"Where have you been all the morning, Dick?" inquired Mrs. Sampson of her 10-year-old son.

"I've been down by the old sawmill watching a man paint a picture," replied Dick, whose chubby countenance was decorated with paint of various colors.

"I am afraid you must have bothered him," said Mrs. Sampson as she began to scrub her son's besmirched features.

"No'm, I didn't bother him a bit," said Dick in a moment's intermission between the applications of soap and water. "He was interested in me. I could tell by the way he talked."

"What did he say?" inquired Mrs. Sampson.

"He looked at his watch," replied Dick, "and told me he knew it was 'most my dinner time. He knew a boy of my age must be hungry, be said, for he'd been a boy himself." — Youth's Companion.


Offenbach and Beethoven

When Offenbach was at Ems at the flood tide of his popularity, he was presented to old Emperor William. "I know you are a foreigner by naturalization," said the kaiser, "but Germany is proud of you nevertheless, for, if I am not mistaken, you were born in Bonn."

"No, sire," was Offenbach's answer, "I am from Cologne. The other man was born in Bonn." The "other man" was Beethoven.


Bedticking Reins

Strong and pretty reins for children may be made of bedticking. Cut a piece 3 inches wide and fold together, sewing firmly. Work the white lines in fancy stitches with colored wools, and across the front piece fasten small bells.

Wagner As a Humorist

1903

How the Master Responded to a London Critic's Suggestion

Richard Wagner was not a man to whom one would naturally ascribe the faculty of ready joking. It is not from the creator of the serious, somber "Flying Dutchman" or the composer of the half mystical, half religious, opera "Parsifal" that one would expect cheerful pranks at the expense of other people. Nevertheless an instance is on record of how the great tone painter of Baireuth played a very funny trick on a newspaper and probably a good many of the readers accustomed to relying on what it said. It was in the fifties. Wagner, then still climbing the ladder of fame, was conducting the Philharmonic concerts in the British metropolis for a season.

Being, as he remained to the end, a very ardent admirer of Beethoven and, in fact, knowing that master's nine symphonies by heart, he selected several of them for performance in the said series of concerts. The first time, then, that Wagner conducted a Beethoven symphony in London the public received the rendition kindly enough, but the next morning a certain newspaper with a very large circulation came out with a rather severe criticism. The author of "Lohengrin" was in cold print but in unreserved terms scolded for directing a symphony by the immortal Beethoven without the score in front of him. Such a proceeding, to which London was unaccustomed, was sheer presumption, so ran the criticism, and, after further uncomplimentary remarks, the great and influential journal advised young Heir Wagner to use a score when he conducted a Beethoven symphony again.

Well, soon Herr Wagner did, this time with a book of music before him on the desk. He was seen to turn over the leaves with a certain amount of regularity too. His reward came the next day in the form of a commendatory article in the aforesaid newspaper which praised him for a very much better interpretation of Beethoven than his last, due, of course, to the suggested use of the score, whereupon Wagner announced the fact that the score in front of him the previous evening was that of Rossini's opera, "The Barber of Seville," turned upside down. — Collier's Weekly.