ed by the piano versions of his works,
because they are abominably thin and inadequate, and they are not
_klaviermaessig_. There should be a Liszt or a Taussig to transcribe
him.

When all's said and done, Sousa is the pulse of the nation, and in
war of more inspiration and power to our armies than ten colonels with
ten braw regiments behind them.

Like Strauss', Mr. Sousa's father was a musician who forbade his son
to devote himself to dance music. As Strauss' mother enabled him
secretly to work out his own salvation, so did Sousa's mother help
him. Sousa's father was a political exile from Spain, and earned a
precarious livelihood by playing a trombone in the very band at
Washington which later became his son's stepping-stone to fame. Sousa
was born at Washington in 1859. His mother is German, and Sousa's
music shows the effect of Spanish yeast in sturdy German rye bread.
Sousa's teachers were John Esputa and George Felix Benkert. The latter
Mr. Sousa considers one of the most complete musicians this country
has ever known. He put him through such a thorough theoretical
training, that at fifteen Sousa was teaching harmony. At eight he had
begun to earn his own living as a violin player at a dancing-school,
and at ten he was a public soloist. At sixteen he was the conductor of
an orchestra in a variety theatre. Two years later he was musical
director of a travelling company in Mr. Milton Nobles' well-known
play, "The Phoenix," for which he composed the incidental music.
Among other incidents in a career of growing importance was a position
in the orchestra with which Offenbach toured this country. At the age
of twenty-six, after having played, with face blacked, as a negro
minstrel, after travelling with the late Matt Morgan's Living Picture
Company, and working his way through and above other such experiences
in the struggle for life, Sousa became the leader of the United States
Marine Band. In the twelve years of his leadership he developed this
unimportant organization into one of the best military bands in the
world.

In 1892 his leadership had given him such fame that he withdrew from
the government service to take the leadership of the band carrying his
own name.

A work of enormous industry was his collection and arrangement, by
governmental order, of the national and typical tunes of all nations
into one volume, an invaluable book of reference.

Out of the more than two hundred published compositions by