Books › Old violins, 1910 › scan 32
Scan 32
Old violins, 1910
11 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 26. See the scan on archive.org.
1head. But any blundering with a sound-bar is fatal to the nervous system of the violin; the wolf may suddenly be evolved—that horrid dull growl which sets the teeth on edge, and which, once generated within the violin, is so difficult to diagnose or to cure. The best old masters finished everything inside their violins as carefully as the purfling and the joinings which would meet the eye, and this although a century might elapse before those tiny smooth blocks in the angles, or that carefully-cut close lining of wooden strips fitting neatly to the bellies as a glove to the hand, might chance to be seen at all.
3Many forgeries have thus been rudely unmasked, the forger only having troubled to make clean the outside of the cup and platter, whilst within you find the dead men's bones of his slovenly dishonesty. He worked only to sell, and to sell by deception (not because he cared for his craft or respected his instrument), and his works do follow him! But as Mr Lowell says—
5"Men as worked thorough is the ones that thrive,
6But bad work follers you as long as yer live;
7Yer can't get rid on it, just as sure as sin,
8'Tis allers askin' to be done agin."
10The finger-board is of black ebony; in the old fiddles it was often inlaid. There need be little said about it except that the old masters would be puzzled to know what a player could want with our long finger-boards, and still more would they have been puzzled could they have heard the extraordinary and complex effects we
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