At length he reads the "Golden Legend" clear,
At length the "Lost Chord" finds itself again.
SIXTY YEARS OF "PROGRESS"
In musical comedy the high-water mark of popularity was attained by The Geisha in 1896, but though Punch speaks handsomely of Mr. Jones's tuneful numbers—as they deserved—he makes it clear that the success of the piece was chiefly due to the talent and humour of the performers—Marie Tempest and Letty Lind; Monkhouse, Huntley Wright and Hayden Coffin. In 1907 the devastating popularity of The Merry Widow amounted, in Punch's view, as expressed in his "Dirge" on the waltz of that name, to a tyranny rather than a delight; and in the spring of 1913 he was moved to protest, in the name of Music, against the wholesale importation of American coon songs, "Hitchy Koo!" and rag-time generally.
In the middle 'nineties the banjo was still fashionable, and the amateur singer a source of grief and wonderment to Punch:—
WHY DOST THOU SING?
Why dost thou sing? Is it because thou deemest
We love to hear thy sorry quavers ring?