I'm longing still, though my hair is gray, for a ball like
Mulligan's ball!

And I drift in dreams to the old-time town, and I hear the fiddle
sing;
And Mulligan sashays up and down till the rafters rock and ring!
Suppose, if I had a woman's eye, maybe a tear would fall
For the old-time fellows who took the prize at the famous Mulligan
ball!

THE GENIAL IDIOT DISCUSSES THE MUSIC CURE

BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS

"Good morning, Doctor," said the Idiot as Capsule, M.D., entered the
dining-room. "I am mighty glad you've come. I've wanted for a long time
to ask you about this music cure that everybody is talking about and get
you if possible to write me out a list of musical nostrums for every day
use. I noticed last night before going to bed that my medicine chest was
about run out. There's nothing but one quinine pill and a soda-mint drop
in it, and if there's anything in the music cure I don't think I'll have
it filled again. I prefer Wagner to squills, and compared to the
delights of Mozart, Hayden and Offenbach those of paregoric are nit."

"Still rambling, eh?" vouchsafed the Doctor. "You ought to submit your
tongue to some scientific student of dynamics. I am inclined to think,
from my own observation of its ways, that it contains the germ of
perpetual motion."

"I will consider your suggestion," replied the Idiot. "Meanwhile, let us
consult harmoniously together on the original point. Is there anything
in this music cure, and is it true that our Medical Schools are
hereafter to have conservatories attached to them in which aspiring
young M.D.'s are to be taught the _materia musica_ in addition to the
_materia medica_?"

"I had heard of no such idiotic proposition," returned the Doctor. "And
as for the music cure I don't know anything about it. Haven't heard
everybody talking about it, and doubt the existence of any such thing
outside of that mysterious realm which is bounded by the four corners of
your own bright particular cerebellum. What do you mean by the music
cure?"

"Why, the papers have been full of it lately," explained the Idiot. "The
claim is made that in music lies the panacea for all human ills. It may
not be able to perform a surgical operation like that which is required
for the removal of a leg, and I don't believe even Wagner ever composed
a measure that could be counted on successfully to eliminate one's
vermiform appendix from its chief spher