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I wish I were a musician. If I could play the piano I should spend each Friday afternoon playing to my bairns. I should give them Alexander's Ragtime Band and Hitchy Coo; then I should play them a Liszt Rhapsody and a Chopin waltz.
Would they understand and appreciate? Who knows what raptures great music might bring to a country child?
The village blacksmith was fiddling at a dance in the Hall last night. "Aw learnt the fiddle in a week," he told me. I believed him.
What effect would Ysaye have on a village audience? The divine melody would make them sit up startled at first, and, I think, some of them might begin to see pictures. If only I could bring Ysaye and Pachmann to this village! What an experiment! I think that if I were a Melba or a Ysaye I should say to myself:—"I have had enough of money and admiration; I shall go round the villages on an errand of mercy."
The great, they say, begin in the village hall and end in the Albert Hall. The really great would begin and end in the village hall.
III.
A very young calf had managed to get into the playground this morning, and when I arrived I found Peter Smith hitting it viciously over the nose with a stick. I said nothing. I read the war news as usual. Then I addressed the bairns.