I might say that the importance of a Homeburg citizen in the old
days was determined by whether or not the Homeburg Band escorted him to
his tomb. When great doings occurred in the neighboring towns, plain
citizens dug down in their pockets for car-fare, and then dug painfully
down once more for our car-fare. When an ordinary Homeburger wanted to
help boost McKinley to victory by parading in some distant town with a
torch, it cost him five dollars and a suit of clothes. But we not only
went free, but got two dollars apiece for plowing a wide furrow of glory
down the streets between rows of admiring eyes.

Those two dollars counted a lot in those days, too. It looked like an
easy income to us. All we had to do to earn it was to beg off from our
employers for half a day, travel thirty miles or so by train, usually
standing up and protecting our horns from the careless mob, march eight
or ten miles over unknown streets, picking out dry places underfoot and
notes from a piece of music bobbing up and down in the shadows above our
horns, and then drive home across country after midnight, getting home
in time to go to work in the morning. Why, it was just like finding
money; I've never had so much fun earning it since. I started once to
figure out how many miles our band marched during the first Bryan
campaign, but I gave it up. We never felt it at that time, but it made
me so tired counting that I quit with a distinct footsore feeling.

The most worrisome task about a Homeburg band was keeping it alive. I
suppose all small town bands have the same trials. We worked against
incredible difficulties. If city people had the same devotion to music
which we displayed, you would have a ten-thousand-piece philharmonic
orchestra in New York playing twenty-four hours a day for glory. We were
always building up our band with infinite pains, only to have Fate jerk
the gizzard out of it just as perfection was in sight. Talent was
scarce, and the rude, heartless city was forever reaching down into
Homeburg and yanking some indispensable players away. Of course there
was always a waiting list of youngsters who would coax a few hoarse
toots out of the alto horn, and we always had a bunch of kid
clarionetists who would sail along grandly through the soft parts and
then blow goose notes whenever they hit the solo part. But try as we
would, we could never get more than two cornets. One of these was Ad
Smith. He was a bum cornetist, but his brot