A Fine Compliment

1895

And It Was Paid to a Famous Ballad Singer by General Grant.

A lot of show people were sitting around one evening swapping experiences.

"The finest compliment I ever had paid me," said a famous ballad singer, "was by General Grant. You know, he was not very fond of music, and once, when we happened to be stopping in the same hotel for a night, and after the performance, I was asked to sing for him. I did not feel very much like complying. In fact, I refused him at first because I had heard that music bored him dreadfully, and he only agreed to hear me because the committee that was entertaining him included me in the attractions.

"About midnight, in the parlor of the hotel, I met the general, and shortly afterward I sat down to the piano to play my own accompaniment to a simple ballad I had selected. The general sat near the piano, and I kept my eye on him so that I could see if he were going to be tired, and if so I was going to quit as short as I could reasonably do. As I sang, however, I became interested in the melody and forgot the general and sang straight through to the end. Then, as the last strain died away, the general rose suddenly, and as he brushed his hand across his eyes he said, 'Confound your music' and walked away. It was not quite what I expected, but it was the greatest compliment he could have paid me, and I told him so when later he came and apologized for having spoken as he did." — Detroit Free Press.

Don't Begrudge Praise

1895

Why is it that, even with the nearest and dearest, praise is so begrudged, while blame is so freely bestowed? In nine cases out of ten the former does infinitely more good and incites to far greater exertion than the latter. Nevertheless, as a rule, the fondest parent, the kindest teacher, the most faithful friend, often hesitates to praise, while seldom failing to censure when the occasion calls for it.

There is ever the feeling latent that the recipient will be unduly elated by any approbation bestowed, and parents and teachers sometimes hesitate on that account to express unstinted commendation, while brothers and sisters and even friends often at heart really begrudge the satisfaction and perhaps self complacency they might evoke by giving expression to the admiration they may honestly feel.

While flattery is ever profuse and easy to obtain, honest praise is a rare commodity, seldom given even when most deserved and grudgingly withheld when most needed. How often a child feels "there is no use trying" simply because his feeble efforts for the right obtain no recognition, while his faults are constantly recapitulated. — Exchange.

The Mystery of Woodrow Wilson

1916

Oswald Garrison Villard writes in part in the North American Review: There are many mysteries connected with Woodrow Wilson. But the greatest is the transformation the day he became President and was no longer governor. He left Woodrow Wilson, the accessible tribune of the people, and became Woodrow Wilson the least accessible and most secluded of all our Presidents. It was not merely that he was oppressed by magnitude of his new task; not that the office of President has grown enormously in routine duties since the days of the last democratic President; not that a private bereavement soon bore him down; not that a physical strength none too great must be husbanded, nor even that problems of state almost unparalleled in gravity and import took their toll of hours for waking and for sleeping. These all had their influence, but at bottom it was the policy that was changed.

He no longer worked in any degree in the open; he sought council of fewer and fewer; his door no longer stood ajar; even his cabinet knew him not for days and weeks, becoming often a mere chorus of ratification. Visitor and volunteer advisers were no longer welcome — more than that, they were under suspicion of some ulterior motive. The burden of proof that they were not secretly in pay of the magnates of Wall street rested upon them. Notably has this been the case with those having knowledge of Mexico. To have capital invested in that country is as effective a disbarment from the Presidential ear as to be doing business in Wall street itself. Our leading financiers have been denied a hearing — to their complete puzzlement. He will not stoop to smuggle captains of industry into the White House by the back door. They are beyond the pale and must be kept there. The President in a recent speech has made it clear that success in business puts one without the Presidential ken. He stated that he did not care to hear from men who had done well under present conditions; when he wished a real insight into conditions he wanted to hear from the little fellows who were bucking the tide and the currents that make against success.

But there are still other tests employed to keep men and women out of the White House. Can they interest the Presidential mind? Have they anything to give to one who communes so freely with himself and works out such vital problems of state on his little typewriter? If not, they may cool their heels in Mr. Tumulty's outer office as long as they please. It availeth them not. Some of the strongest and most loyal supporters of Mr. Wilson have been denied a word, and the sole explanation is the Presidential theory that they had nothing to give him. Here we have considerable light on much that is puzzling. The President seems never to ask what he can do for others, particularly those who have worked for him with complete and devoted enthusiasm. Their homage is accepted; but it never occurs to Mr. Wilson there might be a reciprocal obligation. He has been a stranger even to his own lieutenants.

In May, 1915, I met an official of high position in one of the departments, in whose hands were matters of the utmost moment. His confidential reports would profoundly have affected the whole country had they seen the light of the day. They were constantly placed upon the President's desk. Yet I found this official had never seen the President except to shake hands with him in the lineup at an official reception. Dozens of similar cases could be cited. Even diplomatic officers returning from positions on some of our international "fronts" with first-hand information have been thunderstruck to find their opinions were neither sought nor desired.

Take the case of the federal reserve board. A year after its appointment its members had never met the President save at an official reception to which they were not even invited until attention of some White House functionary was called. Toward members of Congress his attitude is similar, save that these are sent for when the President wants them to do something for him.

Being completely self-sufficient, it never occurs to Mr. Wilson that a word of instruction or inspiration or praise or just a bit of human interest would mean much.

It must be said in Mr. Wilson's favor that he plays no favorites beyond one or two intimates. Men who expended large sums for him in 1912, who nearly worked their heads off for him in New Jersey, have all experienced equality of treatment.

Sometimes, however, the President's refusal of himself to others has more important results. Thus there was a governor once, who, being in Washington, had to go his way without a glimpse of the head of the nation. I have always wondered whether the governor did not remember this when, a few weeks later, the President was asking him to spare the life of a convict of international interest, only to have his request refused.

The Cabinet does not come in for many special privileges. Some of his ablest ministers have known him only in so far as routine demanded his attention. One of the strongest assured me he had never been asked an opinion in three years save at Cabinet meetings — not even during the Lusitania crisis.

In the Lusitania crisis we can see clearly the theory of office of President maintained by the author of congressional government and constitutional government in the United States. The writer believes Mr. Wilson laid the country under lasting obligation by his successful handling of that situation, and that history will accord a high place to the extraordinary series of Lusitania notes. But even an admirer of this fine statesmanship may look with uneasiness upon a policy by which in so great a crisis the way out is found in almost solitary[*] communion. Mr. Wilson held no Cabinet meetings at that grave time save to lay before his constitutional advisers the fruits of his meditation. Mr. Wilson, in the midst of the crisis, went to Cornish and secluded himself absolutely for 25 days.

Wilson government is one-man government. It is not party leadership, but party dictatorship.

The democratic party has been committed by Mr. Wilson personally to various new policies. Until he swung the party to advocacy of a large army and navy, to government by protectorate of Haiti and San Domingo, to purchase the Danish West Indies, the party had always been the anti-imperialistic party. When Mr. Wilson decided the time had come to reverse his position on "preparedness," he neither took a vote of his Cabinet nor of the party leaders. He refused to receive a group of citizens, chiefly of his supporters, who wished to urge him not to change his position. This kind of leadership is not responsible party leadership. His changes of base on the trade commission, woman suffrage, a child-labor law, and the tariff itself — to mention only a few complete reversals — were made without party consultation. The President's policy appears to be purely opportunist as well as purely individual. Members of Congress have been afraid to utter the usual campaign speeches lest the President in his bed chamber change the party policy overnight.

The mystery of the change in Mr. Wilson is intensified by his treatment of Washington newspaper men. The first day upon which he greeted them they were to be his bosom friends. Unfortunately they had a habit of asking searching questions. Soon there were subjects about which correspondents were forbidden to ask — for state reasons. Next, the conference became irregular, and ceased in July, 1915.

It is now reported that in deference to political exigencies and urging of Vance McCormick these conferences are to be resumed. Nothing can make them a success, for mutual trust and cordial friendship are lacking.

What is true of these relationships is true of Mr. Wilson's life in the White House. It is reserved and retired, notably so in contrast to the Roosevelt regime. Mr. Wilson entertains but little. What his warmest admirers have kept on hoping for is that others besides themselves might have access to that bonhomie they enjoy, and thus be disabused of any idea that the President is a mere thinking-machine without any heart and interested in people only so far as they have something to give.

If Mr. Wilson's failure in these relationships merely affected himself, they could be dismissed as individual idiosyncrasies. But these Wilson traits have a distant bearing on the future of the democracy. They must be taken into account by any voter who would forecast the kind of President Mr. Wilson would be in a second term, when temptation will be behind him to lower the public service by bestowing offices for political reasons, by surrendering to organized labor, by frequently reversing his positions. They throw important light upon Mr. Wilson's attitude toward his office.

They explain why whereas there were once notable bodies of young Cleveland men, there has been no similar raising up of young Wilson men to carry on the standard in years to come. There was a beginning in early efforts to oppose Tammany Hall, but with surrender to Murphy, as illustrated by the Johnson case, no more is heard of a reform democracy in New York.

As for the leader in the White House, no fair man doubts his extraordinary ability, his frequent lofty statesmanship, his rare wit, his unbounded power to charm when he will but unbend. He can rise to great heights both in words and deeds. Despite many base anonymous rumors, his private life is all that it should be.

The tragedy of it is that there are those who ought to know who believe the President desires nothing so much as to be loved, not for what he has achieved, nor for his intellectual powers, but for himself alone.

Note: [*] The article used the word 'coliary,' which isn't a word so far as I can determine, and 'solitary' fits the context a lot better.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 26, 1916, p. 8.

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.

When We Criticise

1914

No one who habitually points out others' failures can be a success himself. There is something about the habit of criticism that prevents the free, full expression of good in the life of the critic.

It has been said, for example, that "professional literary critics never turn out any good literature. Their habitual attitude of criticism dries up the sources of literary production." Whether this sweeping statement is true in every case or not, it suggests a warning that most of us need to think about.

To be habitually interested in seeing and speaking about the failures of others is to dry up our own powers of good. And the reverse is equally true; to be sensitively conscious of the good that is in others, to discover it and talk about it freely, is to bring good into being in our own lives that might otherwise never come into existence.

How much better it is to discover that which makes for life than that which makes for death! — Sunday School Times.

The Poet Robert Southey — A Look At His Character

1874

Character of Southey

Southey went rarely into society; scarcely knew by sight any of the country-people living near him; never rode on horseback; took no outdoor exercise save that of walking, and this often from a mere sense of duty, and with a book in his hand; and, although living in one of the loveliest spots in England, and not insensible to charms, preferred the shelves of his library to the finest prospect in the world. He found his relaxation where he found his daily labor, within the walls of his study. "I can't afford," wrote, "to do one thing at a time; no, nor two neither; and it is only by doing many things that I contrive to do much; for I cannot work long at any thing without hurting myself, and I do every thing by heats; then, by the time I am tired of one, my inclination for another is at hand."

Southey was an affectionate husband and a fond father; and whenever, in his correspondence, he alludes to his home happiness, it is with a tenderness and warmth of feeling that are eminently beautiful. Moreover, he was a constant, and, at all times, noble friend, ready even when in straits himself to help with money or with his pen those who were more straitened. No one ever acted better the part of the good Samaritan, and while he never forgot a benefit received, it would seem as if his own magnanimous charity had no place in his memory. The story of his life abounds in instances of the most generous self-denial, and of a steadfast goodness of heart which never shrunk from the demands made upon it. Heavily burdened as he was with work, he was continually accepting fresh literary labor in order to benefit others; nor was this all, for he received, under his own roof, his wife's widowed sister, Mrs. Lovell; and when Coleridge, in that strange waywardness of mood which his vice of opium-eating can alone explain, deserted his wife and children, it was with Southey that they found home. There is a beautiful anecdote given by Lockhart of a poor music-master offering Scott all his savings in the hour of his adversity; a similar story may be told of Southey, who, when his friend May, an early benefactor of the poet, fell into difficulties, sent him more than six hundred pounds, which was all the money he possessed.

If the poet had strong and generous affections he was also a good hater, but this feeling was shown to principles rather than to persons, and if, which was not seldom, political animosity led him to write bitterly against his antagonists, there was not one of them for whom, after the moment of writing, he retained an unkindly feeling. It is said that he seldom spoke harshly of any man with whom he had once conversed; he had too large a heart for petty animosities, and he was wholly free from envy. At the time when a whole year's sale of a ponderous epic failed to produce the poet five pounds, Scott was gaining his thousands, but not a word of bitterness falls from Southey on this score; and the praise he bestowed on his contemporaries, a few of them more distinguished than himself, but the larger number men of far inferior power, is frequently more generous than just.

Although not, as we have said, a sociable man, he had the good fortune to know intimately most of the illustrious authors who made the early part of this century so famous, and, long before Wordsworth had received the public recognition which was his due as the greatest poet of the age, Southey, like Coleridge, expressed his admiration of his friend and neighbor in no niggard terms. This noble triumvirate, by-the-way, reminds us that probably not since Shakespeare's day have three men of equal mark lived together on terms of intimacy and affection. Landor called them "three towers of one castle," and, as all the world knows, they have been absurdly classed together as forming a school of poetry.

Southey had but little ear for harmony, and it was therefore all the more unfortunate for his fame that he elected to write his "Thalaba" in a novel metre, which is without the dignity of heroic blank verse, or the soothing, satisfying charm of rhyme. Landor saw his friend's mistake in this respect, and observed, very justly: "Are we not a little too fond of novelty and experiment, and is it not reasonable to prefer those kinds of versification which the best poets have adopted and the best judges have cherished for the longest time?" But Southey, on the contrary, was well pleased with his experiment, thinking that, while it gave the poet a wider range of expression, it satisfied the ear of the reader. So far is this from being the case, that no one familiar with the lovely harmony of Shelley's verse, or with the delicate music of Coleridge, to say nothing of earlier and later poets, is likely to gain delight from the strange and fitful, and sometimes jarring notes of Southey. But there is strength in his verse, if not harmony, and "Thalaba," while it has its wildernesses and arid deserts, can also boast, as indeed all Southey's epics may, many a fair scene of richness and beauty. Splendor of diction and felicity of description occur frequently, but frequently also the action halts, the verse drags, and the reader feels inclined to resign himself to slumber. On the whole, perhaps, the erudition lavished on the poem is more striking than its poetical wealth, and it is sometimes a relief to turn aside from the text to the curious and highly-entertaining notes which serve to illustrate it.

Southey himself judged "Roderick" to be the finest of all his poems, and Landor, in writing to him, said: "There is no poem in existence that I shall read so often." Charles Lamb, however, an admirable judge, and Wordsworth also, preferred "The Curse of Kehama," and, without endeavoring to compare the value of the two works, there can be no doubt that they are the poet's greatest and least wearisome efforts. It is singular that in none of Southey's epics are there passages which lay hold of the memory, and become, as it were, a part of one's life. No doubt, the first consideration of the poet should be to have a worthy action, and the more he strives after this object, the less will he concern himself with the beauty of particular passages, but the lack of what may be called "beauties" in Southey's poetry is due, we think, less to the severity of his taste than to the diffusiveness of his style, which has, as it were, no points for the memory to lay hold of. With all their deficiencies, however, the student of English poetry can never pass by with indifference these elaborate productions but he is not likely to agree with Macaulay that Southey's poems, taken in the mass, rank far higher than his prose works. — Cornhill Magazine.

Piffle (poetry)

1911

PIFFLE.
There's a word that means a lot,
That will often get your goat.
It's a cynic's hottest shot,
That he hammers down your throat.
It's a nasty little word,
But for withering it's a bird—
Piffle.

When you've spouted all your soul
In an effort to appear
Wise and heavy, on the whole,
And some chap begins to sneer.
Isn't it an awful shame
That one word will gum your game?
Piffle.

Oh, the irony, the cut!
Oh the way it makes you feel!
Any star becomes a mutt
At the finish of his spiel,
When some fellow speaks to say
In a sharp, conclusive way
Piffle.

When you've read this little verse
You'll perhaps be wondering why
It was writ, though quick and terse
with sickness in your eye.
You will mutter, "What a dolt!"
Then will come that awful jolt—
Piffle!

—Baltimore Evening Sun

Wineroom 'Rags' Source of Evil

Indianapolis, 1913

Scientist Dissects Festive Syncopations and Finds They Spur Lower Emotions

EFFECTS ON MORALS LURING

Beware of "Portamento" and Chromatic Slides if You Want to Be Good

A few months ago, when Superintendent Hyland of the police started war on winerooms, he found most of his efforts futile until he struck at what appeared to him to be the heart of the evil — the wineroom music.

Raids had been made repeatedly upon places of doubtful moral character. Persons caught there were arrested wholesale. Some convictions were obtained against proprietors for violation of the Nicholson law. But such fines were promptly paid and offenses repeated. Persons arrested in the places, it appeared, had a right under the state and city laws to go there as much as they liked. If nothing further than being there was proved against them, City Court ignored the charge.

They went back. Then the ukase against music was issued. It caused consternation in the places aimed at, as well as in the first-class cafes and hotel dining rooms, but it necessarily had to include all to reach the ones desired. And it proved effective.

Now comes the question, "Where is the psychological point to the superintendent's order?"

WHAT IS THE LURE?

And again, "What is the mystic lure of music that, in the verbiage of the legal lights, aids and abets the evils that thrive in winerooms?"

Music hath charms to sooth the savage breast, but does it have some of the quality of an affinity, to attract those of evil intent?

More to the point, is music bad?

Or is there merely bad music that is bad?

Or do bad persons like music?

Or what?

And if so, what is bad about music — the melody, the rhythm, the words of the song, or all of them, or none?

There are different views. Not long since a minister was quoted as saying that if composers would only disassociate suggestive words from some of their more lively compositions of ragtime, or, at the least, nonsensical words, and set religious rhymes to their music, their names would go down in history.

There are two attitudes of the day toward the rag from different angles.

HERE'S HOW SCIENCE SEES IT.

A scientific study of the effect of music has been made by Henry W. Stratton, a writer in the Arena, who discusses his observations under the title of "Music and Crime."

He has found by experiment in one of the state prisons that many criminals are exceptionally good musicians. They are of two classes.

First, those whose knowledge of music extends no farther than the popular songs of the day and whose associations with such songs have always been of questionable character. They absorb the sensuous quality of music and can not be morally improved by it because the quality does not contain the necessary musical ingredients to lift them to a higher plane of emotion.

In such songs, this writer says, it frequently happens that where the melody is good and would of itself awaken refining impulses the words produce the opposite effect.

"Again, popular song rhythms are calculated to spur only the lower emotions," he says.

"If a tune is catchy the charm lies largely in its rhythm; the unusual syncopations act upon the listener at unexpected and unnatural parts of the measure and excite unhealthy, unmoral tendencies."

The second class of criminal musicians are scheduled as "darlings of society" who have learned to be musically voluptuous. They yield easily without question to all kinds of music and are unable to resist its enervating influences, They are mastered by their musical sensation.

Mr. Stratton has analyzed ragtime — picked it to pieces — to determine what about it is bad. He finds that a deleterious effect upon the moral nature of a listener is produced by voluptuous slides from one tone to another, called portamento.

"It induces languor and suggests to the mind a relapse from moral discipline," he says. Chromatic passages also tend to promote immorality, he thinks.

RAGTIME GETS THE HOOK.

All this is rather a condemnation of music which is abnormally syncopated, Which contains too frequent repetitions of the portamento and which brings chromatics into frequent play. No class of music quite answers the description so well, perhaps, as the rag.

But one might want to know what makes syncopations, chromatics and slides act so upon the human organisms.

Under the head of "Emotion," an encyclopedia says:

"Unconsciously the spectator, after hearing a musical concert sings and acts cerebrally, and a tenseness of the vocal cords and the whole muscular apparatus of the body results from the imitative effort to make the necessary sounds and to reproduce the necessary movements."

Music, itself, one might deduce, may entice the hearer to attempt an action of the emotion it contains.

But there probably are other conditions to be noted in a consideration of the effect of music in winerooms. Some kinds of music, per se, it is agreed, have bad effects.

A combination of this kind of music and of intoxicating liquors may have a worse effect; then, again, in an open room, it adds privacy to conversations over tables usually located too near one another to otherwise afford privacy. Again, it seems to be a lure for patrons, and, if patronized alone in winerooms and heard there frequently, would tend each time to recall other similar associations.

Altogether one might draw the conclusion that bad music in bad places is bad for good and bad people; bad music in good places is little better for either; good music in bad places has all odds against it; and good music in good places is better for both.

—The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis, November 23, 1913, page 14.