THE C0V1J.i.
i
way. Yet lie is doing more, vastly
more, than could bo done by the role
of revolution to bring Russia to free
dom of thought and speech. The
Russian government trusts Tolstoy
and believes he will lift no hand of
violence, and let no hand of violence
be lifted, against the powers. That is
tremendous fact. There is no other
subject of the Czar that is not watched
and distrusted, there is no other man
alive that the government so believes
and trusts. There is- no other man
alive that Russia so admires and hon
ors. There is no influence that is so
moulding the vast Pansla vie empire
of the future. Very evidently here is
a man standing for principles larger
than sellism. He is simple-minded,
unaware of his greatness, and takes
no thought.
One thing is certain: Tolstoy does
not plead his example or preach as the
world knows preaching. He explains
his conduct, but does not insist that
we be his disciples. He has sought
the truth and, as he thinks, found it.
He does not say that his truth must
be our truth. He challenges us sim
ply to seek heartily and honestly, and
cleave unto what we lind. He has
made mistakes. He is doubtless tco
precipitous, but he is wholly in earn
est. He believes that the Kingdom of
God shall come, and that it shall be a
goodly kingdom with infinite truth
for its security, and divine love as its
law. His doctrines are in some re
spects shockingly unorthodox, but
men who profess the wish to follow
Christ like him arc accepted in most
churches today. He is a socialist,
unquestionably, but of the sort that
goes from the top downward, not from
the bottom upward. Tolstoy would
be the last man in the world to say
that brains and worth, that honesty
and industry are not paramount, and
indispensable, factors and forces in
- the coming society, and that intellec
tual insufficiency, and characterless
ness, and sin are mortal evils. But
treat weakness with kindness, and sin
with charity and meek.iess, and their
truculency departs. Ever since the
Renaissance and the Reformation we
have been making a ne.v aristocracy
of brains and sectarian thoroughbred
ism. Tolstoy would have this straight
way merge into a true spiritual de
mocracy of forbearance and good will.
L. A. Sheumax.
" wwwn.,g TT-mtTttltllMOIIUj
The Passing Show.
ooootoowfro 5
For thou art fair, dear boy.
and at thy birth
Nature and Fortune joined
to make thee great."
w
All men are equal at their birth.
And once again when buried
inearth.
Murphy Do yez moind tho Dago sign
in the window bojant? O'Brien sajs it
manes there's a mon ins'de whot spake s
Frinch.
Fiannigan Tbin why don't they put
it in English eo ivery wan would kcow?
00000OIHOIOOIOMOOMOIOIHKH) !)
ho !
1 ECOUOflV . .
For Shoes that wear
and are worth more
than they cost you,
try us.
Our cut prices beat
all discounts.
wn
AND
MS
1043 O St.
Last week wa9 ono of some moment in
Pittsburg, for it was tho week of Ethel
bert Kevin's home-coming. There is
nothing quito so icspiringly feslivo as
that night-before-Christmas air of ex
pectancy which a big town puts on to
welccmo one of its great oce3 home.
L'ke everyone else I had known Kevin's
songs ever since I was old enough to
differentiate sounds at nil. "O. That
Wo Two Were Maying!" "Little Boy
Blue." "There, Little Giil, Don't Cry,"
"Tho Mill Song," "Goodnight, Good
night, Beloved." "When All tho Land
Was White," "La Vase Brise'who is
there who dees not know them? I had
also known vaguely that In was an
Amencjn, though that seemed rather
impossible. But to asscc.ate him with
Pittsbuig had never occuired to me,
and when I discovered that ho was the
younger brother or tho proprietors of my
own paper, then I decided that in life it
is tho unexpected which happ.ns and
tho impcs3ible which is true.
It was with considerable smothered
excitement that I went to hear him at
his first recital at the Carnogio hall. 1
had been reading about him all winter
and I wes rather afraid the actual arli
clo might not como up to all that had
been wrif.ea and Eaid cfhim. When
the stage door at la3t opened, bistwo
pupils who had co.ue down with him to
sing his Eongs came first, and then there
stepped, cr rather i prang, upon tho
s.aeajouth scarcely live feet three in
height, with the slender, sloping sbou!
ders and shapely hips of a girl, and that
was Kevin: Ba-ely two-and-thirty in
fact, with tho face of a boy of twenty. I
have cover seen a face that mirrored
every shade of thought, every fleeting
mood eo quickly and vividly, and I have
never Eeen a face so exuberantly glori
ously joung. The shepherd bos who
pipeu in mo Vale or Tempo centuries
agooe might have looked like that, or
Virgils Meneclas, when he left his flock
beneath tho spreading beech treo and
came joyous to tho contest or scng. It
is not thit his race is comely, far from
it: it is the youth and joy or him, the
lyrij soul t':at ihines through. But
heie, I will quote whit a great man has
said of him. a critic and a man of re
serve: "I know of no man whose face is so
truly that of a poet-occ who has lived
in Arcadia unit a.-lUprt t.i ,.. .i
shadows and in the cloister of hre. Ha
has al-ajs reminded me of the Raphael
in Van Vondel'd drama-he who camo
do .vi i brightly to plead with Lucifer in
the shadows. To me there is always an
elerneLt of the miraculous in the man of
genius."
He did net turn to his piano atone-,
ho stood like a happy boy pleased at the
warmth of his reception, smilinn-anri
bowing to old friends in the audience.
Anu in truth that audience was almost
a family ailair. There were strange pec
pie seated here and therein that "ee'e:t"
company; the minister in whoso choir
this great man had sung when he was a
boy, the old man to whose apple orchard
hehadmado clandestine nocturnal vis
its, the buteherof whose b'gdcg he used
to bo afraid, tin old lady who once tied
up his leg for him when ho toio it en a
locust thorn, tho toachrrs and instruct
ors who had pronounced him a dunco
and painted dark pictures of his futuic
became he could not learn tho multi
plication table, they were all there.
owo
it c insisted mainly of things thitovery
one knows. After a plajful conversa
tion with bistro pupils, he6at down at
tho piano and tho young man, Mr. Fran
cis Robere, tang thteo of his songt,
Zwei Liedcr," "Le Vase Brise,'' nnd
"Rapolle-Toi." You know whit his ac
companiments ere, scatcely accompani
ments at all, but rather a duet for tho
piano and voice. The instrument seems
to give to tho air a deeper interpret ition
or its own, is tho bouI which Iks behind
it. And to oco can play them as ho
p!as them.
Then Miss Weaver, tho eornno, sang
"A Fair Good Morn." "Dites-Moi!"
"When tho Land Was White," and "In
a Bower." As a last encore she sang
tho charming "Mill Song."
Tho Boy at the piaco sprang up and
shook hands with his pupils and dashed
out for a glass of water for Miss Weiver
and was so generally juvenile and so in
formal that you half expected him to
toin to chat with his audience. Fina'ly
this enfant terrible was sullhiently
edmed to go back to his instrument
The moment he touched the kejs one or
thoso 6wirt thangC3 6wept over his face
and he was another b.-ing. It was si
tragic face now, but it was the tragedy
of youth, like that in do Musiei's verier.
He played his "Melody," I don't know
what "opu?."' At anv rate it was the
same thing that was in bis face, tenJcr,
hopeles?, infinite! sad, the pee ic mclan
cholly of the immortally yourg, or those
who ahvdjs sailer sharply as youth
s utrer s.
The audience simply demanded '-Kir-cissup,"
cs an encore. "Karci.sus"
which ho particularly abominat s as
being tho most puerile or all his early
works, and whose popularity is a curse
which La3 followed him around the
world. "The only apology J can offer
lor wilting tho thing," he said to mo
next day, "is that I have suffered ten
fold more by it than aojoao eho can
have dono."
Tte rcses kept going up over tho foot
Ignis until they were stacked half as
high 8 the piano and the applause did
not cease, and so withadisJainful shrug
anl as;gh he sat down ard, contemptu
ously enough, Lo plajoJ it.
woro tho dunce-cap of his school. Tor
haps it was the dun:e-:ap that stved
him for the world, kopt the nrdent soul
in him untranuueled and fresh, alert for
rart songs while tho other Iiojb weio
thinking ubout the the prico or lumber.
It has been tho helmet or Horinej bo
fore, that dunco cip, and has hidden
rainy a genius until h:s tinio was ripe.
Tho next number on tho programme
was Kevin's "May in Tuscany," (JayjA)
i" Toscana) opuB 21 or hiB piaco compo
sitions, the lafst uni best thiug ho has
published. Heaven?, how tho man has
grown sinco thedujsof "KarcissusI"
My rriond Toby Rex bni always ac
cusod me or too groat a tendency to in
terpret musical compoiitions into literal
pictures, and or enring moro f jr tho pic
ture th n for tho composition in itaeir.
So I shall not attempt to give my im
pressions of "May in Tuscany," but will
give Vance Thompson's iutorrr.sti:iin
of it which was written from the com
posers notes, and which Kevin gave to
mo as the btBt enmenton it. Hero it is:
I shall give his pre graaimc in full, for
Kext Mr. Rogers sarg his "ummer
Day," anJ "Vielle Chanson," and that
raft song, "On tbo Allegheny." lhat
Kevin wrote ono spriog day in his boy
hcoJ. You see it's this way: all winter
long the raftsman is up in the timber
country cutting hemlocks, living in a
log camp, sleeping in a shack, workiag
all day long in frozen Loot?, shut out
from the wor.'d by tho snow-covered
mountainp. In the spring, when the
ijogors out and tho ground go'sso't
and the spring impulse is in the earth
and tho spring lorgirg in the bhod,
tbn tiia raftsmaa's work is done and nn
his strong raft he goes luck to the girl
who is waiting down the river.
"Ahoy, my raft goes down
To ycu, to ycu!
And O, your lover brown
Is true, is true'
O, the exultant expectancy or it! Tho
very air feels lite that of the resistleis
Spring in the mountain, when the sap
S'ainsthe bark of tho maples and the
scent of the pines is in all the laud, tho
big rarts come booming down on the
swollen currents or tho Allegheny. It is
an old poem that nature repeats every
year among tho mcuntaiop, but only
one heart heard it and only 020 boy
knew, and he was a very sad littlo boy
who could not learn geometry and wh0
. Arlecchino: molto vivace.
It was Harlequin, Harlequin, Harlequin,
Son oi the rainbow, he,
Who was born at the dawn of a golden sin
In the arms of a virgin sea;
It was Harlequin, Harlequin.
A riant Harlequin, nonchalaut, riot
ous, amiable Lquacious and cn-orouB
as a bird in tho season of love; I know
this Harlequin.
II. Koltiirno: eon anion.
Kight in tho villa or Boccaccio; ove--hoad
the quiet stars and far below tho
yellow luhtior Florence; ladie, strange
ly merry and deirab!o, dance blithely
and whisper little mocting vows o" love;
cavaliers, splendid in siiks and jewel?,
peacock to an I fro, and chatter or broken
heart; an 1 so thoy play at lovo until lovo
smites them down. They kiss and sob
under tbo quiet stars.
III. Burchetta:
1 he sun isstt'ing and the dull Arno
has shining hints or red and gold; under
the old bridges it shimmerj like silken
ribbon3. The boat gl.des sortly. Tho
girl croons the song of tho waters, which
is the song of hope that comes and goes
and lives and dies and cannot die; and
tho lever drops bis oarB and tho boat
drifts down tho winding Arno under
the old biidges into silence and the
2Iiserieordia: Largo patelico
Oncoajounggitl died. All in white
they laid Ler on a bier. At midnight
wailing men bore it on their shoulders
amid flickering torches through tho
silent street?, along the Lung Arno and
up the great highway that leads to tho
Duomo. And after the b'er came m inv
girls in white, bearing wax cond'ej that
burned reebly ror tho soul or the dead.
As they cimo fo the Duomo they beard
tho chanting or the priests and organ.
V. It Rusignnolo:
AH winter the nightingale sang in ths
garden, icsolent among the Howers, a
zany of the blue night. Only his s.ng
was supple as sadness and sad as a re
proach for he was a zany of the blue
nigh.
VI. La Pastorclloz Lento motto.
FLo w.sa little shepherdess a woman
liko a field or clover. It was in Monte
piano, in the Apennines. Her soldier
lover had been seat away to tight King
Menelik. She mourned for the lover
whom sho had loved too well. She
wept at times, becauso she coul J not go
to the priot. She knew that he. bouI
WJ3 loat for love's sakeand sho mourne J"j
Her sheep strajed on tho hillside; her
staff lay at her feet unhecJed; with her
face en her knees she thought ef her
lover, cf Menelik's fierce men, and,
thinking of her lost soul, she shuddered
and crbd aloud. On tho gray bilhide."
Kext Miss Weaver tang "At Twilight."
Twos April," "Oh! That We Two
Were Maing," "The Merry, Merry
Lark," and that dear li'tlo song from