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We were really quite well supplied with musical instruments, for there were now in the Mission two guitars, one mandolin, a violin and a few harmonicas, besides the two organs, while as for vocalists everybody sang from Mr. H. down to the Eskimo boys, girls and the baby.
A slow and mournful chant arose, the "De Profundis." The blended voices sounded under the arches, intermingling with the somewhat raw sounds of the harmonicas, like the sharp tones of breaking glass.
His apartment, invaded by surprise, was only lighted by some wax candles, grouped round one of Pleyel's pianos, which he particularly liked for their slightly veiled, yet silvery sonorousness, and easy touch, permitting him to elicit tones which one might think proceeded from one of those harmonicas of which romantic Germany has preserved the monopoly, and which were so ingeniously constructed by its ancient masters, by the union of crystal and water.
The boys had brought with them a bag of early apples, which Captain Baker gravely assured them had been duly bought and paid for. The boys also had brought their harmonicas, and later in the evening there was a harmonica concert on the upper deck of the "Red Rover." Later on the girls served their guests with cake and coffee.
Music like this has never come from the orchestra pit of the Auditorium. Strange combinations of sounds that seem to come from street pianos, New Year's eve horns, harmonicas and old-fashioned musical beer steins that play when you lift them up. Mr. Prokofieff waves his shirt-sleeved arms and the sounds increase.
Pike and Margaret alternate with phonograph and piano; and for'ard, although we cannot see them, a full-fledged "foo-foo" band makes most of the day and night hideous. A squealing accordion that Tom Spink says was the property of Mike Cipriani is played by Guido Bombini, who sets the pace and seems the leader of the foo-foo. There are two broken- reeded harmonicas. Someone plays a jew's-harp.
And we have collected picture- galleries, and have studied different schools of art in detail; and we have so many symphonies and orchestras and operas, that it is becoming difficult even for us to listen to them. What music, what pictures, have we given to the people? On the Nikolskaya books are manufactured for the people, and harmonicas in Tula; and in neither have we taken any part.
With inexhaustible patience and imperturbable countenance, he sat on a log, surrounded by yelping dogs, and by children and papooses of more or less tender ages and scanty raiment, playing on ten cent harmonicas that had for a time served as a staple of trade, struggling with the dogs and with their equally excited mothers and sisters for a sight of the wonderful basket from whose apparently inexhaustible depths came forth yet more harmonicas, sets of celluloid jewelry, knives, combs, fish-hooks, needles, etc., ad infinitum.
And why, apparently, should art not be of service to the people? In every cottage there are images and pictures; every peasant man and woman sings; many own harmonicas; and all recite stories and verses, and many read.
The women, being the most easily affected, were almost at once seized with fits of yawning and stretching; their eyes closed, their legs gave way and they seemed to suffocate. In vain did musical glasses and harmonicas resound, the piano and voices re-echo; these supposed aids only seemed to increase the patients' convulsive movements.
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