"Fallen by the Way. Making a Deep Impression."
Evidently an accident to the heavy tragedians.
"Nurse, superior, or Help wanted, immediately: go to seaside: experienced infant."
The infant: "Let her come. I think I shall know how to deal with her."
You've heard of Willy Ferrero, the Boy Conductor? A musical prodigy, seven years old, who will order the fifth oboe out of the Albert Hall as soon as look at him. Well, he has a rival.
Willy, as perhaps you know, does not play any instrument himself; he only conducts. His rival (Johnny, as I think of him) does not conduct as yet; at least, not audibly. His line is the actual manipulation of the pianoforte--the Paderewski touch. Johnny lives in the flat below, and I hear him touching.
On certain mornings in the week--no need to specify them--I enter my library and give myself up to literary composition. On the same mornings little Johnny enters his music-room (underneath) and gives himself up to musical composition. Thus we are at work together.
The worst of literary composition is this: that when you have got hold of what you feel is a really powerful idea you find suddenly that you have been forestalled by some earlier writer--Sophocles or Shakspeare or George R. Sims. Then you have to think again. This frequently happens to me upstairs; and downstairs poor Johnny will find to his horror one day that his great work has already been given to the world by another--a certain Dr. John Bull.
Johnny, in fact, is discovering "God Save the King" with one finger.
As I dip my pen in the ink and begin to write, Johnny strikes up. On the first day when this happened, some three months ago, I rose from my chair and stood stiffly through the performance--an affair of some minutes, owing to a little difficulty with "Send him victorious," a line which always bothers Johnny. However, he got right through it at last, after harking back no more than twice, and I sat down to my work again. Generally speaking, "God Save the King" ends a show; it would be disloyal to play any other tune after that. Johnny quite saw this ... and so began to play "God Save the King" again.
I hope that His Majesty, the Lord Chamberlain, the late Dr. Bull, or whoever is most concerned, will sympathise with me when I say that this time I remained seated. I have my living to earn.
