Work-Let the anvils clang!
Work-Let us sew the seam!

Let us bind the girth of the mighty earth
With the music of our theme!
Sing as the wheel spins round,
Laugh at the red sparks' flight,

And life will flash from the sledge's clash
Till all the land is light!

Over the deserts' waste

We measure the miles of chain,

Till the Steam King roars from both the shores

And rends the hills in twain.

We search in the ocean's bed,

And bridge where the torrent hurled,

And we stretch a wire like a line of fire

To signal through the world!

You with your tinsel crowns
And Kingdoms of crumbling clay,
You with gold in its yellow mould
Rotting your lives away,

Rest when the task is done,

Sleep when the day goes by,

And the sweat of the hand that ploughs the land

Are gems that you can not buy!

Work-Let the anvils clang!
Work-Let us sew the seam!

Let us bind the girth of the mighty earth
With the glory of our theme!

Sing, as the wheel spins round,
Laugh at the red sparks' flight,

And life will flash from the sledge's clash
Till all the land is light!

From the wealth of the living age,

From the garden grave of death,

Comes one acclaim like a furnace flame

Fanned to white-hot breath,

Honor the Man who Toils

And the sound of the anvil's ring;
From a deathless sky a hand on high
Has reached to make a King!

KATE MASTERSON.

In response to a request from one of its readers, to "write something about music," the New York Evening Journal (in its issue of January 19) prints a long editorial exalting the influence of good music on old and young, rich and poor, praising Calvé as a singer and an actor, and (what is to our point) making an attack upon the piano. How is it possible, asks the Journal, referring to a symphony concert, for any sane person to make the piano the center of a musical performance?"

violoncellos, subordinated as it was to the miserable instrument, added more true music to the concert than all the tinny hammerings of the pianoforte.

"It is time for musicians to realize that the piano is simply a sublimated tom-tom and to give up its use.

'For a Paderewski to waste his genius upon such a thing is as though a Titian should spend his life making mud pies."

A number of cultured people hold this same view. Some of them have expressed this view in the office of WERNER'S MAGAZINE, although not with the above quoted (and unnecessary it seems to us) vigor. It will not do to laugh at these critics. The subject is worthy of serious and extended consideration. What do our readers think? We hope in the near future to have a symposium of opinions on this subject from well-known authorities. In the meanwhile there is the question: Is the piano "dead, mechanical, soulless, unworthy of interpret

Mr. Franklin A. Peake is teaching in the American Temperance University.

Ill-health has compelled Mrs. Lillie B. Pierce to abandon most of her professional work.

Mr. Frederick W. Holland has been compelled to abandon all professional work, owing to illhealth.

Mrs. Kendall Holt recently directed the produc tion of the comedy "A Scrap of Paper" at San Bernardino.

Miss Frances Tobey is teaching at Emerson College this year. She was graduated last spring with one of the four class honors.

Mrs. Louise Gage Courtney is now the president of the Women's Philharmonic Society of New York. She was formerly its first vice-president.

WERNER'S MAGAZINE begs to acknowledge the receipt of a package of pencils from the Joseph Dixon Crucible Co. It finds them very serviceable in its work.

Miss M. Florence Scott's repertoire consists of dramatic, pathetic, humorous dialect, characterimpersonations, pantomimic work, and vocal impersonations.

Mr. and Mrs. Carlos A. de Serrano are greatly pleased at the success achieved this season at the Metropolitan Opera-House by their well-known pupil, Mme. Charlotte Maconda.

Miss Jennie O'Neill Potter, who has done more than any other reciter to popularize Ella Wheeler Wilcox's "How Salvator Won," is dying of cancer of the stomach at St. Luke's Hospital, New York.

Miss Mary Coombs held a pupils' recital at Zion's Chapel, December 15, at which twenty-one selections were recited, and a wand drill and a series of energizing exercises and studies in attitudes were presented.

The New York Home Journal for January 17 contains a description of the studio of Mr. Robert H. Hatch. A picture of the studio as it appeared in 1898 ornaments the back cover of Mr. Hatch's "Recitals."

One of Mrs. Anna Carman Woolley's pupilsMiss Alice Cafferty-won a gold medal as the first prize in an elocutionary contest at Erasmus Hall recently. The Minister's Black Nance was the successful selection.

Miss Anna B. Chidester has been appointed director of physical culture in the Vancouver Institute for Defective Youth. She also has one class in articulation. The school is a State institution for the blind, the deaf and the feeble-minded.

Miss D. Ristori Jefferson has resigned her posi tion as director of elocution and physical culture at Albemarle College and has been traveling with a Southern stock-company, appearing in Baltimore, New York, Boston, and Chicago, in "The Greek Slave."

Miss Frances Bowen Smith, teacher of elocution and physical culture at Central College for Young Ladies, gave a recital in the college chapel, Decem"The Nine Cent Girls," ber 14. The Old Man," and "He Giveth His Beloved Sleep" were her principal numbers.

Miss M. Louise Edwards is lecturing before public school institute meetings on the various phases of the elocutionary art adapted to schoolwork. She seeks to emphasize the fact that it is the spirit and not the letter that forms the vital principle of reading.

Yale's annual debate with Harvard will be held at New Haven, March 5. The Yale-Princeton debate will take place at Princeton on May 12. In the Yale-Harvard debate Yale will select the subject. Harvard the side. Yale will choose the side in the Princeton debate on a subject selected by Princeton

The features at the Christmas recital of the Toledo School of Elocution, December 19, were a flag drill arranged by Mrs. Lucia Julian Martin, the director; the recitations Carmelita "

and

Elections of the Future; " scenes from "David Copperfield; and a pantomime of "Lady Clare," also arranged by Mrs. Martin.

Miss Mary E. Byron will give a recital at Carnegie Hall, Pittsburgh, February 23, consisting of dances, statue-posing, and recitations. She has had special music composed for a number of recitations, notably, "An Old Sweetheart of Mine," "Heartsease," The Grapevine Swing," "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother," and Mrs. Wilcox's "The Blue Danube.'

Miss Pauline Phelps has written three new selections- The Sweet Girl-Graduate and "Aunt Elnora's Hero," which are now being recited by Miss Marion Short; and "Rosalind's Surrender,' recited by Miss Jeannette Goodman at her entertainment, December 28. "The Sweet GirlGraduate" will be published in about a week, and will retail at twenty-five cents.

On December 19 Mr. Albert Gerard-Thiers gave a song-recital at Bridgeport, Conn. The Bridge port Evening Post said:" "Lovers of music were given a rare musical treat under the auspices of the University Association. Mr. Thiers explained the various selections in such a way as to make them much more effective. A cycle of Christmas songs was very much enjoyed. He was several times obliged to respond to encores."

While in New York in December, Miss Alice Washburn contributed to the Oshkosh Times for December 10 a letter treating of the Metropolitan drama and the study of the dramatic art in the New York schools. The work of two of the schools she visited particularly commended itself to her, viz., that of the Empire Theatre Dramatic School, conducted by Mrs. Adeline Stanhope-Wheatcroft, and the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts.

It is seldom that mother and daughter appear on the same program, but on December 19 Mrs. Mary Drew Wilson directed the concert of the Beethoven Club of Sioux City, and her mother-Mrs. Daniel Drew-sang Chaminade's "L'Eté." Mrs. Wilson read a paper on "Rubinstein's Fate and Future," and, in illustration, played that composer's "Staccato Etude." As the closing number of the evening she recited Mrs. Burton Harrison's monologue Behind a Curtain."

Under the auspices of the Woman's Missionary Society of Rutgers Riverside Church, Miss Mar guerite A. Baker recently gave a reading from Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush." It was really a synopsis of Ian Maclaren's work. In November Miss Baker recited Saunder's McGlashan's Courtship," The Old Man and Jim" and a character sketch, at the Professional Woman's League. She is conducting a course in Scotch dialect at the New York School of Expression.

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At

Miss Jeannette Goodman's repertoire comprises "Engaged," "The Coming Out of Miss Cummings,' Dancing in Flat Creek Quarters," Candle Lightin' Time," Sambo's Prayer," "Confused," De S'prise Party," Jimsella,' Southern Lullaby," The Soul of the Violin," Nydia the Blind Girl," scenes from " Money," Cyrano ". and de Bergerac " Quo Vadis," "The GreenEyed Monster," "I Got to Go to School,' "Limitations of Youth," "Liza Ann's Lament," and "Wish't I Wus a Girl."

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Miss Agnes Crawford's pupils at the Columbia Institute gave a Kipling recital in December. The program included The White Man's Burden," Danny Deever," Fuzzy Wuzzy," "Tommy," Oonts," "The Overland Mail," "The Widow at Windsor," Gunga Din," Christmas in India," Ballade of Jakko Hill," Ballad of Camperdown," Recessional," "The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows, Two Months," and a scene from "Captain Courageous.' The program was preceded by a biographical sketch of Kipling.

Mr. Albert Mason Harris writes from Cornell College, Iowa: "We have a strong department of oratory here at Cornell, and the field is constantly growing. I think Cornell is the largest denomi national institution of learning west of Chicago,

and I certainly shall try to keep the oratory department up-to-date. We have one teacher besides myself. I have tried to keep in practice as a reader and lecturer by making one date a week. I graduated from Emerson College in 1893, and took the post-graduate course in 1894."

Mrs. Lulu Jones McAnney, wife of the late Rev. C. H. McAnney of New York, and for five years previously to her marriage teacher of elocution and physical culture at Dickinson Seminary, is now located permanently in New York and engaged in teaching. She had entire charge of a successful Christmas entertainment at St. Paul's M. E. Church, when she used "Under the Greenwood Tree and drills and dialogues in " Werner's Readings No. 17." In February Mrs. McAnney will give an entertainment in the West End Presbyterian Church, using Scarf Fantastics," "The Lotos-Eaters," and selections from WERNER'S MAGAZINE.

Representatives of six of the largest lyceums in the country, said to control about eighty percentage of the lecture and concert business, have effected an organization to be known as the Association of American Lyceum Managers, with the following officers: President, George H. Hathaway, of the Redpath Bureau; vice-president, R. L. Slayton, of the Slayton Bureau; secretary and treasurer, R. C. Caldwell, of the Southern Lyceum Bureau. Other lyceums represented were the Brockway Lecture Bureau, the Star Lyceum Bureau, and the Central Lyceum Bureau. The objects of the association, as explained by Secretary Caldwell, are mutual interest and protection.

Here is a suggestive Christmas program, presented by the Brooklyn Girls' High School and arranged by Miss Caroline B. Le Row: Chorus " Nazareth "

Story-" Mercy's Christmas Eve

Poem-" Christmas Bells

Chorus-" Christmas

Hymn

Poem-" In Quest of the King". Chorus-" Silent Night

Semi-Chorus-" Say, Where Is He Born?

Gounod.

etc.

She is also the author of "Muscular Exercises for Health and Grace," published in 1893. About two years ago Miss Newcomb went abroad, last winter conducting classes in Rome and in Naples. Besides her regular classes she will organize a normal class for teachers, and in connec tion with physical culture will also give instruction in physiology, anatomy, and the sciences upon which the principles of physical training are founded.

A musicale under the direction of Mr. Edmund J. Myer was given at Y. M. C. A. Hall, New York, January 16. All of the participants were pupils of Mr. Myer. Following is the program:

Song from the Persian".

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He Loves Me

Bitte "

Chadwick. Chadwick. Spicker. .Pitman. Wagner.

. Parry. Brooman. Coombs. Meira.

Tosti.

Godard.

Joyce.

The Creation

Haydn. .Lehmann.

Mme. Luisa Cappiani gave a concert at Mendelssohn Hall, New York, December 8, assisted by Mr. Dudley Buck, Jr., tenor; Mr. Hubert Arnold, violinist; Signor Guiseppe Del Puente, baritone; Mme. Laura Bellini, soprano; and others. The program was:

Preislied from "Die Meistersinger
Aria- Ah! fors è lui "

Song-" For the Sake of the Past
Aria--" Figlio mio" from "Le Prophète

Goss.

Violin Solo-" Adagio "

Mendelssohn.

.Haydn.

Story" A Christmas Gathering at Bleak House." Semi-Chorus--" Come Unto Him .Handel.

Mrs. Liska Stillman Churchill and Miss Martea Gould Powell announce a series of five interpretative readings, beginning January 23 and ending May 1. The program for the series is as follows: January 23, Colorado Authors, Barton O. Aylesworth, Patience Stapleton, Liska Stillman Churchill, Charlotte M. Vaile, L. B. France, Alice Polk Hill; February 6, Southern Writers, James Lane Allen, Ruth McEnery Stuart, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and F. Hopkinson Smith; March 6, Newspaper Literature, notably Mr. Dooley and Mr. Bowser; April 3, French Novelists, Honoré de Balzac, Pierre Loti, Victor Hugo, Alphonse Daudet, Alexandre Dumas, and short stories from French literature; May 1, the Poets of England, the early balladists, Keats, Shelley, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Browning.

Mrs. Celeste Langley Slauson received her elocutionary training from Mr. Henry Dickson and from Mrs. Laura J. Tisdale, of Chicago, and at the Boston School of Oratory, graduating from the latter institution in 1886. For four years she taught at her home in Illinois and gave readings throughout the State under the auspices of the G. A. R., as she was formally adopted daughter of the regiment by the 125th Illinois Infantry, in deference to her father. Mrs. Slauson moved to Seattle in 1890. She helped to organize the Seattle Conservatory of Arts, taking personal charge of its department of elocution. The rapid growth of Seattle has brought several new teachers and readers there, and Mrs. Slauson is now deavoring to organize a State association of elocutionists.

Aria-" The Swan and the Skylark,"

Wagner Verdi

Mattei.

Meyerbeer. Vieuxtemps.

Goring Thomas.

The pupils of the Stanhope-Wheatcroft Dramatic School gave a very creditable matinee performance of four one-act original plays: "At the Hearth," by Harvey Palmer; The Mikado's Message," a farce comedy in one act, by W. B. Hardin; Juliet of the People," an original play by Willis Steell; The Guests of Honor,' an impossible farce, by Carrie V. Schüllermann; at the Madison Square Theatre, New York, Jan. 25. It is Mrs. Wheatcroft's policy to present plays by her pupils several times during the year, and she aims to have all her pupils take part in some one performance. As a rule the actors were sincere and free. They showed a tendency to force their voices a little. and there was a trifle too much exuberance of spirits, but on the whole the performance was free from amateur faults, and the stage-management throughout was excellent. We present on another page a picture of several of the students. among them Miss Lena Raffetto, who, as the Guilietta of "A Juliet of the People," did the best work of the afternoon. There were some very good dances in the plays, one being a Japanese dance for four girls, and one Old Time dance, supposedly done by George and Martha Washington. The incidental vocal music also added to the general effect of the whole.

Mr. H. T. Daghistanlian, an Armenian by birth, who came to this country when a boy, and who is a graduate of Emerson College of Oratory, has posed specially for WERNER'S MAGAZINE for sev eral scenes in his reading of "Ben-Hur," the pictures appearing in this number. These poses sup: plement the criticism of the play Ben-Hur which appeared in our January number. Mr. Daghistanlian appears first as Ben-Hur, the prince, surrounded by luxury and love; then comes the description of that holy night when the angels sang their song to the listening earth. We pre

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sent no picture of him as he appears during the scenes which intervene between the first Christ

mas and the chariot-race, but six which illustrate the action he throws into this splendid portion of the story. We see Ben-Hur hardened by his resolve to crush Messala; we see the eager audience in the circus; the sweep of Messala's arm as he is about to raise the lash to deal Ben-Hur's welldoing Arabs the cut which he hopes will drive them forward in a mad panic; now comes the final goal, and the anxious watcher leans forward with his injunction, Speed thee, Jew!" The spirit of the man flashes out, and, at his call, the four as one answer with a leap," which ends in the final Victory," as Messala is overthrown and defeated, and justice is vindicated.

Mrs. Loraine Immen arranged and directed the program of the November meeting of the Grand Rapids St. Cecilia Society. It was a marked departure from their usual recitals, being devoted to a review of the popular songs of fifty years ago. After an introductory talk by Mrs. Immen, the following program was rendered: Long, Long Ago.. Missionary Hymn Uncle Sam's Farm

Do They Miss Me at Home?
Ossian Serenade

Juanita

Swiss Toy Girl

Enoch Arden

Rock Me to Sleep, Mother. Shells of the Ocean

March de la Norma

The Battle of Waterloo. My Old Kentucky Home. Lorena

Kathleen Mavoureen

A Little Mountain Lad.
Oft in the Stilly Night.

The Watcher

Blue Juniata

Old Folks at Home
Good-bye

T. H. Bailey.

Lowell Mason. N. Barker. .S. M. Grannis. O. E. Dodge.

.T. J. May. .J. Barnett. S. Winner. A. Leslie. .J. W. Cherry. Burgmuller. G. Anderson. S. C. Foster. Nevin.

.F. N. Crouch. .S. Roeckel. Sir J. Stevenson. .William Larder. .Mrs. M. D. Sullivan. .S. C. Foster. J. C. Engelbrecht.

Grand Fantasie "The Mocking Bird "...Hoffman. Auld Lang Syne.

In speaking of the work of Mrs. May Donnally. Kelso, the New York Journalist recently said: "One of the best-known lecturers and readers in Chicago and Chicago has many of them—is Mrs. May Donnally-Kelso. When one hears the word 'lecture he ofttime has in mind a long, dry discourse on some topic in which he is not particularly interested. When Mrs. Kelso delivers a lecture she captivates her audience from the beginning and holds it to the close. Properly speaking, she is a dramatic author lecturer, who presents an

sketch.' In these author sketches' she has been very successful, having delivered them before nearly all the important clubs of Chicago. Her treatment of the subjects combines biographical sketches, throwing side-lights on the lives and the characters of the authors, reading selections from their prose and their verse, analyzing their writing, and delineating the beauties and the strong points Mrs. Kelso has original of their greatest works. lectures on Rudyard Kipling, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Dickens, and Shakespeare-all of them admirable. She interprets the meaning of the author, and presents him in a way that shows years of training and technical skill and the Had highest understanding of her chosen the stage rather than the teaching of dramatic presentation and elocution for her lifework, she unquestionably would have been a leading star in the profession. But her field is broader in her chosen line."

art.

she

Prof. Alexander Melville Bell, a stockholder in the Edgar S. Werner Publishing and Supply Co., and an advisory editor of WERNER'S MAGAZINE, is called by Dr. S. S. Curry, in a recent number of his journal, the greatest living elocutionist." The Rev. William R. Alger, at a recent lecture before the School of Expression, paid the following tribute to Prof. Bell: "One of the divinest miracles of the nineteenth century-a great, constant, scientific miracle of genius and beneficence-is the science and art of visible speech constructed by Alexander Melville Bell for the ennobling transformation and rescue of deaf-mutes from their disability. This peerless achievement ought to carry his name, and surely will carry it, floating enshrined in grateful glory through all nations and all ages. Christ once said, after having miraculously single deaf and dumb man, Greater

a

than this shall ye do.' How wonderfully his prophecy 1S now fulfilled as, simply in consequence of what Alexander Melville Bell has done, from land to land around the world thousands of such afflicted persons learn to read the silent forms of the lips, and simultaneously cease to be deaf and begin to be eloquent! Well may the author of such a world-wide miracle of beneficence afford, in his grand old age, to walk the streets unnoticed and unnamed while the newspapers are blazoning the portraits and frantic crowds shrieking the honors of the champions of brawn and muscle."

At the University of Chicago, on November 10, was held the second annual contest in declamation by representatives of high-schools and academies affiliating and cooperating with the University. There were thirty-one representatives. From these, at a preliminary contest held before a committee on selection, ten speakers were chosen for the final contest. The young men and women were judged separately, and a prize scholarship (one year's tuition in the University) was awarded to the successful candidates: Miss Leah A. Hare, representing the Rockford High School, and Mr. William J. Leach, of the Bradley Polytechnic Institute. Miss Hare's selection was "The Ringing Up of the Curtain," a description of the nomination of Abraham Lincoln by the Chicago conven tion of 1860. Mr. Leach recited "A Life Struggle," from Victor Hugo. In writing of the contest, Miss Clara F. Randall, Miss Hare's teacher, says: "The encouraging feature of the contest was that the emphasis of approval by judges and by uni versity was laid upon clearness, earnestness, and simplicity. The subjects chosen were worthy and dignified, the articulation distinct, the speaker relying on the value of what was said rather than on the decoration of gesticulation, following the law laid down for architecture: Construction may be decorated, but decoration can not be constructed.' All lovers of oratory will welcome this return to the principles of true eloquence, this movement toward sincerity and simplicity, this turning from the vanity, affectation and falseness that have so often caused the name of elocution to become a byword and a reproach."

deeds

.Rogers.

Brandeis.

Nevin. Haynes.