Books › The Red Book 1911-01: Vol 16 Iss 3, 1911 › scan 174
Scan 174
The Red Book 1911-01: Vol 16 Iss 3, 1911
14 lines. Read by computer on 14 September 2026. Printed page 557. See the scan on archive.org.
1He played the Vieuxtemps "Fantasie"
3notion of rivaling trained dogs and moving pictures."
5Virginia cast an intolerant eye at her companion, and began at once to challenge and defend.
7"Don't you dare to talk to him like that," she exclaimed. "He's going to win. I just know he is. There's something about him that just makes you like him the moment you begin to know him. He has had a hard life, and he deserves to succeed. He has courage and he can play, and now don't you go discouraging him!"
9That night Virginia prevailed upon "Toothbrush" to get out his fiddle, and in the parlor, with half a dozen selected boarders present, he played. It did not take many strokes of his bow to convince Virginia that his was a great talent. He played the Vieuxtemps "Fantasie," then ran through the "Legende" of Wieniawski. Then, in response to a burst of applause he muted the strings and played Dvorak's "Humoresque." Virginia had heard Fritz Kreisler, Mischa Elman, and the great Ysaye, but to-night she listened with greater attention than ever before. When he was through, she congratulated the player with the warmth of amazed satisfaction.
11Weeks went by, and a month. Daily the little man would enter the dining room with a hesitant timidity, bow to the assembled diners, tuck the corner of his napkin under his chin, and crumb crackers into his soup. And daily he closed the door of his third-floor room, ran through fingering exercises, and submitted to the drudgery which the tyrannical violin demands of him whom it has enslaved. And every day Virginia prayed for his success as he went forth to invade the lairs of the booking-agents.
13She divined with her woman's intuition that he was receiving the rebuffs of office menials, and was being denied even the opportunity to play at the weekly "try-outs." To have tried-out before a brutal judge-advocate of vaudeville, amid the racket of carpenters' hammers and the
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