Books › The violinist, 1903 › scan 13
Scan 13
The violinist, 1903
25 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 11. See the scan on archive.org.
1The Violin Microbe
3"One of the most insidious and yet amiable microbes that I know anything about," remarked a local music dealer to the Washington Star, "is that which we in this business call the fiddle bug. The fiddle bug operates upon those whom it takes possession of in a great many different ways. For example, there is a well-known physician here in Washington who was seized by the fiddle bug only two years ago, although he is now a man well into middle age. It hit him bad. The way it seized him at first was to give him the idea that he just naturally had to learn how to play on the violin. He, a busy medical practitioner, past fifty, with the natural stiffness of movement that comes with that age, got it into his head that life would be just one long stretch of the bad lands and a howling desert for him unless he learned how to play on the violin!
5"Well, he began. He invested in a fine and expensive outfit—first-rate violin and bow, music rack, elementary violin music—all the accessories. He engaged a good violin teacher. The teacher looked the elderly medical man over and told him frankly, at the outset, that he was a good 1,000 to 1 shot, or words to that effect, so far as his chance of ever learning to play on the violin was concerned. The doctor didn't take any offense. He had the fiddle bug too bad for anything like that. He said he was willing to pay the freight and take a chance. He didn't have a particle of music—that is, so far as the acquisitive end of it is concerned—in his whole huge frame. After about two months' lessons the violin teacher told the doctor that it would take him at least thirty years to learn how to pound a bass drum, much less how to play 'Not for Joe' or 'Yankee Doodle' on the fiddle.
7"This discouraged the doctor some, and for a time he took the teacher's word for it and abandoned the idea of learning the violin. Two months later the fiddle bug nailed him again. He bought a second violin—not that he had disposed of the first one, but that he liked fiddles—liked to have them around to look at, even if he couldn't play. He engaged a second teacher, who ran shrieking from the doctor's presence at the end of the fourth lesson with his fingers in his ears.
9"Then there's a well-known man in one of the departments who has had the fiddle bug for a matter of forty years—ever since he was a boy. He's had first-class instruction, time and again, during all those years, and yet the best he can do now is to play very simple pieces fairly well. He loves to play these simple pieces over every night of his life, and he never misses a night. This man is not under any delusion as to his ability as a player—he knows exactly where he stands on that and makes no bones about ridiculing his own music. But he's just got the fiddle bug, that's all, and he always will have it. He has fiddles, and some of them good ones, all over his house—under the sofas, and lounges, and beds, on the tables, on top of the bookcases—they're everywhere; and he's buying 'em yet. He has spent thousands of dollars on fiddles and fiddle accoutrements, but he has never had anything more than average means."
11Kubelik's Gallantry
13On the evening of Kubelik's last visit to Glasgow he drove to the concert hall in a cab, accompanied by Mme. Bertha Marx and Otto Goldschmit. It was a cold and wet night, but opening the door the famous violinist jumped out and gallantly laid his music books on the top of the snow and ice in order that his fair partner might get into the hall without damaging her dainty shoes. The famous story of Sir Walter Raleigh was instantly recalled to the minds of the onlookers, who heartily cheered the chivalrous action of the violinist.—Pittsburg Commercial Gazette.
15We always want names of violinists, whether we happen to mention it or not, and are willing to send THE VIOLINIST for one year to anyone who will forward ten good names and addresses, with street number, and half-a-dollar.
17HOW well I remember my grandfather's breeches—
18The short roomy legs with the bags at the knees,
19The patches in front, the seat covered with stitches—
20The seat quite as full as a sail in the breeze;
21The faded straw hat and the wide knit suspenders,
22The hickory shirt like an armor of tin;
23And grandfather, one of Apollo's defenders,
24Essaying to play on the old violin.
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