Puslapio vaizdai
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It was the wrapping of a recent present going to be like her, so I shall give all from her cousin Frank. my gum to John Edward. The rest of that poem is:

"That 's very strange," said Mrs. Lane as she went down the steps, her nose still elevated, "I thought I smelled something."

Marianna leaned forward in the hammock and listened until she could no longer hear the swish of her mother's skirts; then she darted at that scrap of pink paper and thrust it hastily down a crack; then she searched in the remote corners of her mouth with her tongue to satisfy herself that Frank's present was still there; then she walked over to the steps with the glass of malted milk, and poured it slowly out as a libation upon her mother's fern bed.

"What you doing that for?" called a voice from the garden opposite.

Marianna, looking up, was astonished to see a little girl sitting on the steps across the way. She was a black-haired Gipsy of a little girl in a bright-red frock, and she had her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. Though the new family had moved in a week ago, this was the very first appearance of anything so vivid and interesting.

"Because I hate malted milk," Marianna shouted back.

"But Mrs. Browning did not chew it, And so I think I shall not do it."

Marianna was much impressed. "Do you know a good rhyme for Frank?" she said.

"Spank," said the other without a moment's hesitation. Marianna opened the gate and started up the path.

"Oh, you can't come in here," cried Elizabeth Barrett, scrambling up on the top step; "you must n't get near me. I've got chicken-pox."

Marianna stopped short, her hands. clasped behind her.

"What's that?" she said.

Can't you see the little red speckles all over me?" said Elizabeth Barrett, thrusting out a small, pointed chin in the direction of her visitor. "Did n't you ever

have it?" Marianna shook her head and came a step nearer. "You did n't?" said the other with a touch of scorn. "What have you had?"

"I had a boil once," said Marianna, with dignity, "and my cousin Frank has

"They never could make me touch it," a cold." said the other.

Marianna liked the tone of this immensely. She went down the steps and across the street to the opposite hedge. The other little girl continued to sit with her chin in her hands, regarding the middy blouse and the yellow pigtails out of two elfish, black eyes. Marianna explored in the back of her mouth again.

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'Do you chew gum?" she inquired. "Yes," replied the other, exploring in the back of hers; "one of my best poems is about it. It begins:

"They do not know that I chew gum Because I keep so very mum."

"Do you write poems, too?" said Marianna, amazed.

The other nodded.

"Piles of 'em," she said; "sometimes I write five a day. My name 's Elizabeth Barrett, so I can make 'em up just as easy. There was another poetess named that, you know. She wrote sonnets from the Porchoo Geese. When I grow up I'm

"Oh, colds are n't anything," scoffed Elizabeth Barrett, wrinkling up a brown, snub nose; "everybody has piles of colds. I 've had German measles and scarlet fever and tonsulls and mumps, and John Edward 's had real measles and addernoids, and now he 's got whooping-cough."

"I've had periter-nighties, too," piped a voice from the apple-tree, and immediately whooped.

Marianna now saw two sturdy legs in blue overalls dangling from a limb that commanded a view up and down the street and above the legs a mischievous little face peering out between the leaves. "Do you see him yet, John Edward?" said Elizabeth Barrett.

"Nope," replied John Edward, and edged a little farther out on the limb.

"My papa's a doctor, and my mama 's a doctor, so we have everything," continued Elizabeth Barrett, with doubtful logic. "What do yours do?"

"Papa goes to his office," said Marianna, glad to be able to report some activity on the part of her family.

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"Blowna-b-l-o-w-n-a-blowna sage," said Elizabeth Barrett, impatient at such stupidity. "We can't go down to the store because we 're in quarrelteen. You might as well come up here now and sit down," she added calmly. "You 've come so close you'll catch it, anyway."

Marianna, it is true, had been gradually creeping nearer and nearer, as these interesting revelations followed one another, until she was at the foot of the steps.

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'Does it hurt, the chick-those speckles?" she asked, retreating a little.

"No; 'course not," said Elizabeth Barrett. The middy blouse sat down cautiously beside the red frock. Elizabeth Barrett pushed up her sleeves and stretched two slim, rigid little arms out in front of her. "Just look at 'em," she said proudly. Marianna examined them. They were certainly covered with the most luxuriant speckles. Then she rubbed her fingers over them to see if anything came off.

"My arms have a thousand specks,
My ear but one;

But I'll have some more, you bet,
With the rising of the sun,"

repeated Elizabeth Barrett.

"Nine, ten, eleven, twelve," counted Marianna, touching each little speckle lightly with her forefinger.

"Oh, I see him, I see him! He's com

ing!" cried John Edward, sliding from his crow's-nest in the apple-tree. The others jumped from the steps, and the three children crowded out upon the sidewalk, regardless of all quarantine regulations. Several blocks away they could see a jaded, white horse toiling up through the vista of maples, a small deliverywagon behind him.

"Oh, I hope he 'll have piles of blownas," said John Edward, dancing up and down in his impatience.

"We 've only got ten cents, anyway," said Elizabeth Barrett.

Then suddenly, as they watched, the old white horse veered.

DELICATESSEN

HECKELSTEIN'S BEST BRAND

BOLOGNAS SAUERKRAUT

could be read for a moment on the side of the wagon before horse and sign disappeared entirely down a side street.

"He's going the other way," cried Elizabeth Barrett. John Edward started blindly off down the middle of the street.

"Blowna-man, wait a minute! Please wait a minute, blowna-man!" he called. His sister brought him back whooping.

"Come inside the gate," she said sternly, pushing him before her, “or you know we'll catch it." Then she turned swiftly upon Marianna. "You'll have to go," she said. "Run after him quick; here's the ten cents."

Marianna took the money mechanically. The suggestion that she, Marianna Lane, pursue a sausage-man and buy bologna was very shocking. Marianna knew nothing about sausages except that they were one of the seven deadly sins. She had always been hurried past the delicatessen-shop window, where they hung in tempting strings, and where she would fain have lingered. "No one knows what is in them, Marianna," her mother had said; since then Marianna had been hoping for a chance to investigate for herself.

"Hur-ri-yup!" said John Edward, placing his small, brown palms on the back of the middy blouse and pushing with all his might. Marianna hesitated for just one moment; then she ran-ran madly, deliriously, after the blowna-man, her pig

tails bobbing behind her, her slim legs flickering through the patches of sunshine, until she turned the corner and vanished.

Elizabeth Barrett and John Edward, leaning out over the gate, thought she never would reappear. After about ten minutes, however, she did. She was walking very slowly. In one hand she held a paper bag, in the other she clasped a section of bologna, which she was nibbling daintily. "She's eating it all up!" cried Elizabeth Barrett.

John Edward ran outside the gate again, and made a trumpet of his hands. "No fair!" he shouted. "Bring it here! No fair!"

But Marianna went right on nibbling. Then suddenly they saw her stop short in the middle of the sidewalk, the bologna poised at her lips.

But

"Whasser matter?" they called. Marianna neither spoke nor stirred. She had heard a voice and a footstep. The footstep was coming down a gravel path behind the line of privet hedge, and the voice was saying:

"Yes, Mrs. Smith, I 'm so glad to have had this little talk with you. Proper assimilation, that should be our watchword with these little lives that are intrusted to us. Why, here is my little girl now, waiting for mama. Shake hands with Mrs. Smith, darling."

The moment Marianna heard that watchword she finished the bologna in two gulps. Then she took a fresh grip on the neck of the paper bag and gave her hand prettily to Mrs. Smith.

"I let her go down now and then and get animal crackers," said Mrs. Lane, looking complacently at the paper bag. "I believe in a little sweet for children once in a while, don't you, Mrs. Smith?"

Marianna followed her mother up the street in a trance. She could see two dark heads hanging over the gate a block away, and a glint of red frock flickering like a danger-signal.

"Hur-ri-yup!" called John Edward, with a prolonged whoop.

"Mercy! there's a dreadful child with the whooping-cough over there. Keep close to me, Marianna," said Mrs. Lane, and she steered instantly across the street. Marianna, at her heels, ventured a cautious glance over her shoulder. Elizabeth Barrett and John Edward were star

ing, speechless, after their departing blowna. They seemed unable to believe in such treason.

"When we get home we 'll have a little tea-party with the animal crackers, you and mama, won't we, darling?" said her mother. "Come, Marianna, don't loiter. You can walk on the curbstone any time." Mrs. Lane set her hand upon the gate.

"O Mama," said Marianna, suddenly, "my paper bag has gone down the sewer!" and she stood gazing into the gutter with the sweetest composure.

"Gone down the sewer?" repeated her mother, turning in astonishment. "Why, Marianna, mama thinks that was very careless of her little girl. I sha'n't let you buy any more to-day. You must learn to be careful with your things."

There could be no doubt about it. It really was inexcusably careless. The sewer hole opened against the curbstone in a vertical position, and things were projected into it only with difficulty from the street.

Marianna walked reluctantly through the gate after her mother. She was full of misgiving as she thought of her five o'clock malted milk; she had never in her life felt less like malted milk. She felt, in fact, very queer. She wondered if it could be the chicken-pox coming out.

Suddenly there arose an indignant chorus from across the street. Elizabeth Barrett had just achieved another poem.

"Fraidy-cat, saw you throw it,

So your mother would n't know it!
"Fraidy-cat, saw you throw it,
So your mother would n't know it!"

"What are those rude children saying?" said Mrs. Lane, stopping puzzled at the door, and turning around to listen. "They're not talking to you, are they, Marianna? What was that-saw you throw something? So your mother would n't what? Know it? Know what, Marianna? What have you thrown away? Were you carrying anything but the bag. of ani- Marianna, I want you to come into the house this minute and tell me exactly what was in that paper bag."

And Marianna, as she went through the screen door, thought it quite possible that she might be going to catch other things beside the chicken-pox.

OPE

OPERA IN ENGLISH

ITS RELATION TO THE AMERICAN COMPOSER

AND SINGER

BY REGINALD DE KOVEN

PERA in English is no new thing in America. More than a generation ago, when grand opera was a heavily subsidized luxury for the wealthy and the cultivated few, and the Metropolitan Opera-House in New York was still a tentative and costly experiment, the socalled standard operas were being sung in English throughout the country by traveling organizations like those of Emma Abbott, the Boston Ideals, the Bostonians, and others. The operas were generally adequately interpreted by competent artists, with a degree of popular interest and consequent financial success which made handsome fortunes for these enterprises. The artistic success achieved by the Thurber Opera Company, the first to give opera in English on anything like a Metropolitan scale, showed that the lack of permanence of this praiseworthy experiment was due to extravagant conditions of organization and financial mismanagement rather than because the public at large did not care for opera in English. In later years both Mr. Henry W. Savage and the Messrs. Aborn have given grand opera in English in more or less satisfactory artistic fashion and with generally uniform. financial success.

In view of these facts, it is hard to see why we are not forced to admit that opera in English in this country has not been for some time an accepted fact rather than a debatable possibility. It is only within the last few years, when interest in opera as a form of entertainment has spread and increased to a notable extent, that individual writers and critics, and societies and organizations like the National Federation of Musical Clubs and the National Society for the Propagation of Opera in English, have voiced a rapidly growing popular sentiment by asking why opera in English should not be admitted

to our great opera-houses. The foreign influences which have controlled, and still control, these enterprises, were at first definitely inimical to including opera in English in their scheme of opera-giving; but popular opinion is mighty and will prevail, so that now opera in the vernacular, both original and in translations of standard works, has gained a permanent place in the regular repertoires and plans of our three leading operatic institutions.

This being so, it might seem superfluous to argue the question further, or to insist that we are the only musical people of the world who permit their opera to be sung to them otherwise than in the vernacular or to demand that all our opera should be so sung. But the entering wedge for opera in English has only just been driven in, and there are still so many intelligent opera-lovers who decry opera sung in English that it seems important to indicate briefly the points at issue, and, if possible, to clinch the argument in favor of a proposition which has an important bearing on the development of music in America.

From a purely esthetic point of view it must, I think, be admitted that the contention that opera should be sung in the language which inspired the music is a valid one. From the point of view of practical possibilities, however, this contention can hardly be sustained, as otherwise the Russian opera "Pique Dame" would not be sung to us in Italian; we should not be obliged to hear the original Bohemian text of the "Bartered Bride" in German, or have the original German idiom of "Kuhreigen" distorted into French. If the text of operas must of necessity be translated, why, in an English-speaking country, not translate them into English? Inconsistencies of this kind must surely invalidate the esthetic plea for the original

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Fourth, the lack of artists competent to sing in that language.

The first two of these objections may readily be answered as one; for were we to have the proper artistic translations of foreign texts, now readily obtainable, both would disappear. It is certain, answering the third objection, that any one who has heard Signor Bonci sing in English can no longer maintain that English as a singing language is either difficult or impractical; and it is equally certain, to reply to the last objection, that if the public demands that all operas should be sung in the vernacular, singers to sing them could and would be found. As a practical musician who has sung in four languages, I confidently maintain that to an Englishspeaking person English, when properly studied, is, next to Italian, the pure language of song, the easiest language in which to sing. In this day and age of dramatic opera, when intelligible dramatic diction has become a sine qua non for any kind of intelligent enjoyment, the hackneyed and lackadaisical argument that opera is always unintelligible, and that therefore the language in which it is sung matters not at all, is too puerile to discuss. The inwardness of the whole question of opera in English for American audiences is, I think, summed up in a conversation I had two years ago with Signor Gatti-Casazza, the director of the Metropolitan Opera-House, in reference to his including opera in English in his regular operatic plans. Knowing that much of his reputation as an impresario was due to his mounting of the Wagner operas at La Scala, I said to him:

"May I ask, Mr. Gatti, when you gave your performances of Wagner in Milan, in what language these operas were sung?"

"In Italian, of course," he replied. "May I ask further," I continued, "had you given these operas with the original German text, what would have been the result?"

"Why, nobody would have come to see them," he answered, thus proving conclusively that in Italy at least, it is impossible either from an artistic or a financial point of view to give opera in any language but the vernacular.

If the Italians insist imperatively that their opera should be sung to them exclusively in their native tongue, thereby making of opera an intelligible and therefore more popular and generally interesting entertainment, making of it, in fact, a national institution for the masses, and not alone for the classes, why should not we opera-lovers of America free ourselves from the limitations imposed by foreign influences that impede our national operatic development, and demand the same thing?

We must, I believe, admit that opera in English is practical from the point of view of language, desirable from its resultant intelligibility and consequent wider appeal to popular interest and sympathy, and therefore finally inevitable to us as an English-speaking musical people. For if to-day opera, as it undoubtedly is, has become the dominant, the most popularly appealing, and most opportune musical form for the expression of creative musical thought, it is also inevitable that the future activities of the American composer must be largely operatic to assure to himself artistic progress and development, and to secure for his art the needed wider national recognition, significance, and importance. And to what language shall a composer write opera if not to his own?

I have so far employed the term "opera in English" in referring to that language when used in connection with music in opera. But there is another term-“English opera"-which has a far more pertinent and important significance in its bearing on the subject under discussion. Opera in English and English opera, though correlated terms, are nevertheless not sufficiently coincident to be interchangeable. Opera in English, as I take it, means the performance in the English language of the operas of the standard repertoire; while English opera would mean the production

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