

BANJO VS. VIOLIN 157 



says the chappie who carries a felt-covered banjo under 

 his arm on the way to the sea-side, or to an evening call 

 on some pretty girl ; " the fiddle isn't of much account 

 nowadays." It is true, is it not ? And yet when a man 

 has devoted over forty years to the instrument, has played 

 the sonatas of Beethoven and Mozart for a generation, 

 and owns a Stradivarius, does not this crude criticism 

 sound harsh ? The pity of it is that life is not long enough 

 to explain the AB C of music to the banjoist. Certes, he 

 can amuse his audience better than the man with the bow, 

 who has not the remotest desire to compete with him ; but 

 is it because the violin is not the superior instrument, or 

 because the player and audience lack equal cultivation 'I 

 That there is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time 

 to mourn and a time to dance is recognized by even the 

 violinist, but well, I was going to say that the banjo- 

 horse is a capital mount for the banjo-boy or the banjo- 

 girl ; but if a man with loving persistence has embraced 

 his Cremona for twoscore years, has drawn forth its deli- 

 cate tones as a comfort through the gloom of nights of 

 sorrow, and has burst forth with it at the daybreak of re- 

 newed hope in anthems of gladness, both his soul and the 

 quivering song-laden wood wrapt in mutual affectionate 

 bliss, he prefers this poet of instruments to the banjo ; 

 when a man has once studied equitation in its finer feat- 

 ures, and has trained his horses to perfect gaits and man- 

 ners, he prefers the educated steed. But we have not yet 

 reached the point where brains go for as much as money, 

 or for what some people are pleased to call Society, though 

 we are fast getting there. The Chinese are ahead of us ; 

 among them the school-master ranks as he should. When 

 one thinks of the society which clusters about our College 

 greens and the world-famous work which emanates from 

 their studious closets, and then goes to his book-shelves, 



