dth escapes." Before he
became acquainted with the later French idiom Harvey W. Loomis
"spontaneously breathed forth the quality of spirit which we now
recognize in a Debussy or a Ravel."

Curiously enough, however, these statements did not annoy me. I found
no desire arising in me to deny them and doubtless, though mayhap with
a guilty conscience, I should have ditched the undertaking, consigned
it to that heap of undone duties, where already lie notes on a
comparison of Andalusian mules with the mules of Liane de Pougy, a few
scribbled memoranda for a treatise on the love habits of the mole, and
a half-finished biography of the talented gentleman who signed his
works, "Nick Carter," if my by this time quite roving eye had not
alighted, entirely fortuitously, on one of the forgotten glories of my
library, a slender volume entitled "Popular American Composers."

I recalled how I had bought this book. Happening into a modest
second-hand bookshop on lower Third Avenue, maintained chiefly for the
laudable purpose of redistributing paper novels of the Seaside and
kindred libraries, of which, alas, we hear very little nowadays, I
asked the proprietor if by chance he possessed any literature relating
to the art of music. By way of answer, he retired to the very back of
his little room, searched for a space in a litter on the floor, and
then returned with a pile of nine volumes or so in his arms. The
titles, such as "Great Violinists," "Harmony in Thirteen Lessons,"
and "How to Sing," did not intrigue me, but in idly turning the pages
of this "Popular American Composers" I came across a half-tone
reproduction of a photograph of Paul Dresser, the only less celebrated
brother of Theodore Dreiser, with a short biography of the composer of
_On the Banks of the Wabash_. As Sir George Grove in his excellent
dictionary neglected to mention this portentous name in American Art
and Letters (although he devoted sixty-seven pages, printed in double
columns, to Mendelssohn) I saw the advantage of adding the little book
to my collection. The bookseller, when questioned, offered to
relinquish the volume for a total of fifteen cents, and I carried it
away with me. Once I had become more thoroughly acquainted with its
pages I realized that I would willingly have paid fifteen dollars for
it.

This book, indeed, cannot fail to delight General Mencken. There is no
reference in its pages to Edgar Stillman-Kelley, Miss Gena Branscombe,
Louis A