nd serves his fellow-men."

In the biography of Delmer G. Palmer we are assured that "Versatility
is a trait with which musical composers are not excessively burdened.
There are few performers who can include _The Moonlight Sonata_ and
Schubert's _Serenade_ with selections from _The Merry-go-round_, and
do justice to the expression of each, much less would such
adaptability be looked for among composers. As most rules have
exceptions, in this there is one who stands in a class occupied by no
one else, Mr. Delmer G. Palmer, the 'Green Mountain Composer,' who at
present resides in Kansas City.

"As recently as 1899 Mr. Palmer wrote a song in the popular 'ragtime,'
_My Sweetheart is a Midnight Coon_ and almost in the same breath also
wrote the heavy sacred solo, _Christ in Gethsemane_. The first is of
the usual light order characteristic of this class of music. The
latter is as far removed to the contrary as is comedy from tragedy.
The 'coon' song entered the bubbling effervescing cauldron of what is
termed 'ragtime' music among the multitudinous others, and soon was
seen peeping through at the surface among the lightest and most
catchy.... The sacred solo found its level among the heavier in its
class, and if the term may be here applied, it was also a hit."

S. Duncan Baker, born August 25, 1855, still lives (1902) in the old
family residence at Natchez, Miss. "In this house is located the den
where he has spent many hours with his collection of banjos and
pictures and in writing for and playing on the instrument which he
adopted as a favourite during its dark days (about 1871)." We are told
that he composed an "artistic banjo solo," entitled, _Memories of
Farland_. "Had this production or its companion piece, _Thoughts of
the Cadenza_, been written by an old master for some other instrument
and later have been adapted by a modern composer to the banjo, either
or both of them would have been pronounced classic, barring some
slight defects in form."

I cannot stop to quote from the delightful accounts offered us of the
lives and works of Albert Matson, George D. Tufts, D. O. Loy, Lavinia
Pascoe Oblad, and forty or fifty other American singers, but it seems
to me that I have done enough, Mencken, to prove to you that the great
book on American music has been written. Without one single mention of
the names of Horatio Parker, George W. Chadwick, Frederick Converse,
or Henry Hadley, by a transference of the emphasis to t