Hid secretly in my heart, I long had a passion for music-boxes. While I was innocent of the ways of the world, and thought that Art, as some think that Manners, had a ritual to which one must conform in order to be considered a gentleman, I hid this low-born taste from my friends and talked daintily of Brahms, his frozen music, of the architectural sonata, and other things I did not understand. How musicians and artists must have laughed at me when they saw my hands--square, constructive palms, wilful thumbs and mechanical fingers! Music-box hands! But though I had long ceased cutting stencils of other people's thoughts and frescoing my own vanity therewith, I dared not confess to John this wretchedly vulgar penchant for the music-box of Commerce--the small, varnished, brass and cedar affair, which is the only instrument I can play.
But at ten of the clock one night the yearning became so intense in me that I burst the bonds of my discretion, and lo! at the first word John fell heavily into my arms. He, too, cherished this unhallowed joy in secret, and had long hidden this tendresse behind a mask of propriety. We dried our eyes, and were into overcoats and out on the street in a single presto measure, set to a swift staccato march for the Bowery. We must have a music-box apiece before we slept--we swore it in a great forte oath! Prestissimo! but we were hungry for a good three-dollar package of discord! It was none of these modern contrivances with perforated discs and interchangeable tunes we were after; not the penny-in-the-slot, beer saloon air-shaker nor the authropomorphic Pianola; only the regulation old-fashioned Swiss instrument would serve, the music-box of our youth, the wonderful, complicated little engine with a cylinder bristling with pins that picked forth harmonies from the soul of a steel comb, its melody limpid with treble accompaniments lithely sustained at the small end, where the teeth are small and active, with a picture of children skating on the cover top, and beneath, under glass--oh! rapture!--the whirring wheels all in sight, tempting the small, inquisitive finger of youth.
After an incredible amount of discussion as to the relative merits of the repertoires, we came to a decision and fled home, to abandon ourselves to the distractions of our tiny orchestras. The boxes were so full of music! They have been trying to empty themselves ever since, but the magic purse seems inexhaustible. One night, in my idyllic youth, a German band played all night long under my window; but now I could carry the divine gift of music in my overcoat pocket! I was like that Persian monarch for whom was made the first pair of shoes. "Your Majesty," said his vizier, "now at last for you, indeed, is the whole world covered with leather, as thou hast demanded!" O Allah! Now for me was the whole world patrolled with German bands! They played "Say Au Revoir, but not Good-bye" under my pillow; they gave me "Honey, my Honey" as I ate my breakfast.
Before the week was up we had learned every tune by heart, down to the last grace-note in the accompaniment. We had learned, too, the sequence of tunes, inevitable, unchanging as the laws of the Medes of old. Never again shall I be able to hear "Sweet Marie" played without a shock that it is not followed by the "Isabella Waltz!" Never again shall I hear the end of "Honey, my Honey" without a tremble of nervous suspense till comes the little click! of the shooting cylinder, the apprehensive pause, and then--hurrah! the first gay notes of "Sweet Marie!"
But we could not long endure the perfect simplicity of the airs, and the old touch of supercivilization led us on to attempt to vary and improve the performance of our songs. It was John who discovered the virtue of a few pillows stuffed on top of the machine, and he achieved immense con expressione effects by waving the box wildly in the air. I contented myself with changing the angle of the fan-wheel so as to make it play allegro; then one got so very much music in such a very little while--surely a pardonable gluttony! Had my box been larger I might have heard seven complete operas in an hour, like the old Duke in "Sylvie and Bruno!" Yet, after all, it was versatility of quality, rather than mere quantity, that should be the greatest victory, and we set out on experiments in timbre. At last we found, John and I, that by inserting a little paper cylinder under the glass, so as to press on the keys, we could give Sousa the grip, as one might say, and he would cough and wheeze in a way to amply discredit the statement that there is no such thing as humour in music. A greater thickness of paper gives the effect of a duo with mandolin and banjo, and this was by far the most successful of our variations.
I should end as I began, I know, by a bit of maudlin philosophical moralysis. I might, for instance, trace the resemblances in the musical world and say that for me the conductor waving his baton is as one who winds the key to a very human music-box, in which each tooth of the comb is a living, vibrant human being. Or I might broach a flagon of morality, forbye, and show how each one of us plays his little mental tunes in a set routine, wound up by the Great Musician; what devils stick their fingers into our works, and bid us play more fast or slow, more loud, more low; what jests of Fate, who inserts her cacophonous paper cylinder that we may wheeze through misfortunate obbligatos of pain.
But no! My forelegs are stuck in the bog of realism, and I shall not budge from the literal presentation, for my little kingdom of delight suffered a revolution! It was John's fault, for John had been affecting a musical countess who gave afternoon talks on the "art of listening," in a studio--dry molecular analyses of Kneisel Quartets and such like verbiage. So he came home late one night, while a music-box was bowling away merrily upon the couch with a one-pillow soft pedal. It was my music-box, too!
"Bah!" he swore, "your box phrases so abominably. It is so cold, so restrained, so colourless! Hear mine, now--isn't that an excellent pianissimo? There's polished technique! There's chiaro scuro! Oh, listen to that 'Cat Came Back!' My machine is an artist; yours is a mere virtuoso. Mine is a Joachim, a d'Albert; yours is a Musin, a de Kontski. Get onto the smooth, suave legato of this wonderful box! Hear its virile octaves! Hark to those scales, like strings of white-hot pearls dropping upon velvet!" He was moaning and tossing as he snored these parodies. It was a nightmare, both for him and for me. At four o'clock, in the first pink grey of the morning, I could endure it no longer. I arose haggardly and threw the two music-boxes into the fire!
A Plea for the Precious
Now if a youth as mad-headed as I, without bookishness or literary education of any sort, with neither much of anything to say, nor much desire to say anything--if such a charlatan would have his wares bought and his words read, he must be antic beyond his contemporains (a shorter word than the English equivalent, whereby I go forward one step in brevity and back two in translation). He must pique curiosity and tempt the reader on; he must pay a contango, which is, by the same token, a premium paid for the privilege of deferring interest. He must in short, be "precious," a quality essentially self-conscious. This has been at times a popular pose in Letters, and when successful it is a sufficiently amusing one, as poses go; but I name no names for the sake of the others who fall between the stools of purpose and pretence--who tie, as one might say, two one-legged beggars together and think they have made a whole man.