Drawing out the instrument with as much care as if he
were a mother taking her babe from the cradle, he looked it all over
with anxious scrutiny, scanning every line and crack, as the mother
scans face and hands and tiny curled-up feet. Finding all in order, he
wiped it with a silk handkerchief (the special property of the
instrument; a cotton one did duty for himself), polished it, and tuned
it, and polished again. "Must look well, my beauty," he murmured;
"must look well. Not a speck of dust but she'd feel it with those
little fingers, you know. Ready now? Well, then, speak up for your
master; speak, voice of my heart! 'A welcome for Rosin the Beau.' Ask
for it, Music!"
Do people still play "Rosin the Beau," I wonder? I asked a violinist
to play it to me the other day, and he had never heard of the tune. He
played me something else, which he said was very fine,--a fantasia in
E flat, I think it was; but I did not care for it. I wanted to hear
"Rosin the Beau," the cradle-song of the fiddle,--the sweet, simple,
foolish old song, which every "blind crowder" who could handle a
fiddle-bow could play in his sleep fifty years ago, and which is now
wellnigh forgotten. It is not a beautiful air; it may have no merit at
all, musically speaking; but I love it well, and wish I might hear it
occasionally instead of the odious "Carnival of Venice," which
tortures my ears and wastes my nervous system at every concert where
the Queen of Instruments holds her court.
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