old
man's stick.

The conductor, too, works hard at rehearsals; not, as you might think,
with the stars, but, like the limelight man, with the youngsters. The
stars can look after themselves; they are always sure to go. But the
nervous beginner needs a lot of attention from the band, and it is
pleasant to know that in most London halls he gets it ungrudgingly. A
West End _chef d'orchestre_ said to me some time ago: "I never mind how
much trouble I take over them. If they don't go it means such a lot to
the poor dears. Harry Lauder can sing anything anyhow, and he's alright.
But I've often found that these girls and boys hand me out band parts
which are perfectly useless for the modern music-hall; and again and
again I've found that effective orchestration and a helping hand from us
pulls a poor show through and gets 'em a return booking. Half the day of
rehearsing is spent with the beginners."

An extraordinary improvement in the musical side of vaudeville has taken
place within the last fifteen years. Go to any hall any night, and you
will almost certainly hear something of Wagner, Mendelssohn, Weber,
Mozart. I think, too, that the songs are infinitely better than in the
old days; not only in the direction of melody but in orchestration,
which is often incomparably subtle. It is, what vaudeville music should
be, intensely funny, notably in the running chatter of the strings and
the cunning commentary of woodwind and drums. Pathetic as its passing
is, one cannot honestly regret the old school. I was looking last night
at the programme of my very first hall, and received a terrible shock to
my time-sense. Where are the snows of yesteryear? Where are the
entertainers of 1895? Not one of their names do I recognize, and yet
three of them are in heavy type. One by one they drop out, and their
places are never filled. The new man, the new style of humour, comes
along, and attracts its own votaries, who sniff, even as I sniff, at the
performers of past times. Who is there to replace that perilously
piquant _diseur_ Harry Fragson? None. But Frank Tinney comes along with
something fresh, and we forget the art of Fragson, and pay many golden
sovereigns to Frank to amuse us in the new way.

Where, too, are the song-writers? That seems to me one of the greatest
tragedies of the vaudeville world: that a man should compose a song that
puts a girdle round about the globe; a song that is sung on liners, on
troopships, at feasts in