It happened, or shall we say began, on a Sunday night. During the many days previous to this, things had picked up little by little in Cherry’s subway radio studio. One evening the little Irish girl who played the piano had brought in a young fellow with a shabby violin case under his arm. “Can you play it?” Cherry asked.
“A little,” was the modest reply.
The young fellow, who had gone through all the horrors of the Battle of Flanders and Dunkirk, was Scotch. He could do weird things with that violin. With it alone he could make you believe that a score or more of bagpipers were marching down the street. And when it came to that mellow old Scotch song:
“Flow gently, Sweet Afton
Among thy green braes
Flow gently. I’ll sing thee
A song in thy praise.”
he could bring a happy tear to many a tired eye. So he was given a place on the program, and weary Cherry sang a little less than before.
Other musicians wandered in. Where they all came from no one will ever know. Next there came a cellist, then a drummer, two bass viols, two clarinets, two more violins, a gypsy girl with tambourine and castanets,—all these and half a dozen others wandered in. After that they had an orchestra. There was not an “artist” in the hard and fast meaning of the word among them all, but they could roll the barrel, set Johnny loving, swing the chariot low, roll the old chariot along, and do a hundred other songs dear to the hearts of the good common people of old England and to many another who did not consider himself quite so common.
All this gave Cherry a breathing spell now and then. But when the members of the orchestra had each done his bit for just so long, there would come calls from all down the subway: