Franklin Square Song Collection - online songbook

200 favorite songs and Hymns for Schools, Homes Lyrics & Sheet Music

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	8o	FRANKLIN-SQUARE	SONG COLLECTION.
	The following tribute to the memory of the late Matthew Arbuckle, whose magic cornet made his name a household word with millions, will doubtless waken a responsive echo in the heart of every one who was privileged to know that brilliant artist and kindly, courteous gentleman: " Half-a-dozen years ago,"writes a lady, one of his pupils, " an old cornet hung upon the wall of my home, and it somehow happened that I tried it 'to see how it would go.' By a little per­sistence I got a tone, and finally became fascin­ated with the noise I could produce, and, working away as much as the neighborhood would endure without complaints to the police, I got some mastery.		The performance was horrible, of course, but one April day I appeared at Mr. Arbuckle's door in New York, a petitioner for lessons. I remember how kindly he received me; how he gave me courage at once by commending my poor attempt at ' Robin Adair,' so that he could know what I could do and where to be­gin with me. I remember the next three months of his helpfulness,his patience, his encouragement, his hopefulness; how he put no limit to the' hour's lesson' we had bargained for,and often entertained and helped me a whole afternoon, sometimes taking his cornet, and, forgetting all the world else, giving me his won­derful rendering of delightful airs and ballads. I re-
	COME, CHEERFUL COMPANIONS.			Vive la Compagnje.
	member, too,his comical running to the corner of the room and hiding his face when I had my lesson poorly, and how he would look over his shoulder laughing at me and shouting: ' Try it again,' and when the work was done to his satisfaction, how proud and glad and happy he seemed. He was every inch a gentleman; in every fibre a musician. He gave me music arranged by his own hand; he selected and tested a cornet for me, and all the ' crooks' and' mutes' and mouthpieces, and every other appliance of a cornetist's outfit, and there was nothing he could do, by instruction and ad­vice, that he left undone. A country girl of fourteen, alone in the great city so far as kindred were concerned,			he bade me welcome to his home. His wife wasalmcsta mother to me, his daughter a friend indeed. I want to say how good he was, how true to his art, how kind, sweet-tempered, big-hearted—a noble man in every thing. Christopher North, a lover of nature, never said a truer or awiserthingthanthis,inhis Soliloquy on the Seasons:" Turn from the oraclesof man, still dim even in their clearest response—to the oraclesof God, which are neverdark. Bury all your books when you feelthe night of skepticism gathering around you; bury them all, powerful though you may have deemed their spell to illuminate the unfathomable; open your Bible, and all the spiritual world will be as bright as the day."