MY HARMONIUM 



I found it very easy to please the people ; they 

 would look at pictures by the hour, and as for music, 

 it was the very summit of bliss. When I got a new 

 harmonium with stops there was a constant pro- 

 cession of visitors to see the marvel. They gave 

 deep grunts of wonder when I pulled out the stops 

 and caused the different tones, and leaned over to 

 pull them for themselves ; and when the coupler 

 stop came out and the octave keys went down with- 

 out any fingers touching them they edged away 

 with apprehension, and then came crowding back to 

 see it again. 



The best music, to their minds, is the gramo- 

 phone. That pleases them the most; it sings and 

 plays and talks and whistles; and, as one of the 

 people said to me one evening when I suggested 

 that they had had enough, " We could listen to it all 

 night." 



Some of them had never seen a talking machine 

 before, and I had to laugh at their bewilderment. 

 They got close up to the trumpet, to see what was 

 going on at the bottom of it ; they held the discs to 

 their ears, in the hope of hearing the music that 

 way ; they scrambled for the worn needle-points, and 

 carried them home as trophies; and all the time 

 they kept up a running fire of comments "Ai-ai, 

 that is the voice of a very tall man ; nala, it is even 

 better than our brass band ; immale, why cannot it 

 sing like an Eskimo ? " 



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