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Relic of the ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay?" he asked, pointing to a vacant store building across the grass-grown street; "or bought up by the government, maybe, to keep out competition in the post-office business hello, is this where you hang out?"
He recognized it as a symptom of the mal du siecle, a deliberate break with the natural rhythm of life, a desperate ennui, the hysterical pressure upon an aching cancer. Ragtime twitched at the nerves. This thing jostled you, bustled you. It was a shout a caper the ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay of its day, riotous and vulgar.
That he was of a slightly belated temperament will be readily understood when we say that he was at this time just beginning to whistle, with fair correctness, "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay," to discuss the character of Becky Sharp, to dwell upon the remarkable promise as a vocalist shown by Madame Adelina Patti, and to wonder at the marvellous results said to be accomplished by the telephone.
The old gentleman whose portrait forms the first illustration of this book told me that the tricks he does were learnt by his great grandfather from a friend in Lahore. This takes us back some 150 years. The tricks have remained the same as when taught at Lahore though my old friend has brought them up-to-date by singing "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay" between each experiment!
At all events, next day, the whole village, men, women and children, were singing, humming and whistling "Auld Lang Syne," and "Auld Lang Syne" lasted for several days, and from that day "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay" was heard no more. It had lost its charm.
It chanced that when I left London a new popular song had come out and was "all the rage," a tune and words invented or first produced in the music-halls by a woman named Lottie Collins, with a chorus to it Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, repeated several times. First caught up in the music-halls it spread to the streets, and in ever-widening circles over all London, and over all the land.
She can't quite forget the days and nights when she used to accompany her mother round the public-houses and dance for coppers. Jane is also a terpsichorean artiste, and tingles the tambourine to the stepping of her feet; whilst Annie is another disciple of the art, and sings a song with the strange refrain of "Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay!"
When we were brought to a stand at last by a snarled challenge and the click of rifles overhead, they answered with the chorus of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, a classic that ought to have died an unnatural death almost a quarter of a century before.
This part of the trail traversed the heavily wooded bottom-lands, before starting to climb the grassy steeps of the further bank. As they sat on a log discussing their bread and cocoa, a rollicking song came, as a sound comes fluctuating through the woods, now from this side, now from that, and curiously deadened. It finally resolved itself into the air of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay with words in Cree.
In an alley round one corner an organ man was playing "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay," and some of the girls began to dance and sing around him. Coming to the main artery of traffic, they were almost run down by a splendid equipage which was cutting across two thoroughfares into a square, and they screamed with mock terror as the fat coachman in tippet and cockade bellowed to them to get out of the way.
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