280 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



September 



"ll'^altzen and "Why Not?" 



I have been preaching for years that 

 it is stupidly academical and pedantic 

 to e.sclude etich truly inspired pieces as 

 Strauss' waltzes from the programmes 

 of our symphony concerts, but against 

 stupidity, as Schiller has remarked, the 

 gods themselves fight in vain. A sym- 

 phony is considered all right though it 

 be the veriest trash, but a waltz that is 

 a product of pure genius is tabooed un- 

 less it is smuggled into a symphony, as 

 by Tschaikowsky. What makes the sit- 

 nation the more peculiar is that pianists 

 of the highest caliber never hesitate to 

 insert waltzes by Chopin or Strauss on 

 their programmes. But, then, pianists 

 are their ovvn bosses; they have no 

 academic board of directors. 



The taboo placed on the Strauss 

 waltzes by the minor professional mu- 

 sicians who regulate orchestral concert 

 affairs is seen in its full blooded asiuin- 

 ity when we bear in mind how the 

 greatest composers of our century have 

 honored and admired Johaun Strauss. 

 To begin with the two antipodes, 

 Brahms wrote on Mme. Strauss' fan the 

 first bars of the "Blue Danube Waltz," 

 with the words, "Not by Brahms, I re- 

 gret to say." And Richard Wagner 

 wrote in 1863 that "a single Strauss 

 waltz surpasses in charm, refinement 

 and genuine musical value most of the 

 imported and often laboriously manu- 

 factured products of foreign musicians. ' ' 

 It is often said that Wagner undervalued 

 his contemporaries, but Liszt, Franz and 

 Strauss are decided exceptions. Mos- 

 kowski relates that once at a dinner 

 Waguer proposed a toast "to all music- 

 al geniuses from Bach to Johann 

 Strauss," and it is known that he often 

 played his waltzes at Baireuth with 

 more animation than skill. Liszt's ad- 

 miration for Strauss was equally sin- 

 cere, and his greatest pupil, Tausig, 

 arranged some of these waltzes for 

 piano, con amore. — Henry B. Fink in 

 Looker On. 



An Enthusiast. 



"You can't comprehend what a gen- 

 uine enthusiast is till you have known 

 one as I have. " This oracular declara- 

 tion from the man of the world called 

 for a story by way of evidence. 



"When Tom Blumber and I were 

 boys together, he was an enthusiast on 



tfie craze ror garnering postage stamps. 

 Rewrote, advertised, hunted and would 

 have walked across the continent for a 

 rarity in his line. Suddenly he switch- 

 ed to dogs and had everything from a 

 toy terrier to Great Danes. He had a 

 canine herd that would crowd an acre 

 of ground. . They barked and howled 

 and fought till he fell in love, and he 

 was either courting, serenading, send- 

 ing soft poetry or hanging around till 

 the girl married him just to have peace. 

 "As the honeymoon waned he was 

 seized with baseball enthusiasm. He 

 would have faced a battery to get to a 

 game. He yelled, jawed, bet, followed 

 the club from spring till fall and was a 

 noisy bleacher even in his sleep. The 

 next turn e f the crank made him a fish- 

 erman. Out of season he would sit in 

 the back yard and make casts by the 

 hour just to keep his hand in. There 

 was never invented or suggested any- 

 thing to lure the finny tribe that he did 

 not have in his collection, which would 

 fill a freight car. He could sit on a wet 

 rock all day without winking and then 

 go shining or trolling all night. Get 

 him in a crowd and he'd have every- 

 body talking fish inside of five minutes, 

 and when he saw the Lone Fisherman he 

 cheered till an usher got him out of the 

 theater. Now he's a singer, and every 

 house within a block of him is vacant. 

 He has no more music in him than a 

 blackbird, but he is an enthusiast. " — 

 Detroit Free Press. 



Spider Silk. 



Notwithstanding the failure common- 

 ly attending attempts hitherto made to 

 obtain from spiders, gathered collective- 

 ly for the . purpose, an amount of silk 

 sufficient for industrial uses, it is now 

 claimed by M. Cambolle, a French nat- 

 uralist, that the Madagascar species of 

 this insect is susceptible of management 

 capable of some practical results in this 

 line. He has found that the spider of 

 that country is capable of producing at 

 the beginning of its work more than 

 100 yards of thread per hour, increas- 

 ing in quantity until it actually pro- 

 duces more than 150 yards in that 

 length of time. His experiments also 

 show that this thread has about the 

 consistency and strength gf the thread 

 yielded by the silkworm tjhat is fed on 

 mulberry leaves. A peculiar little ma- 



