THE POWER OF MUSIC.

New Zealand Tablet, 24 February 1921, Page 32

THE POWER OF MUSIC.

A correspondent sends the following from an American friend to the Anglo-Gelt : “I was loitering around the streets last night,” said Jim Nelson, one of the old locomotive engineers, running into New Orleans. “As I had nothing to do I dropped into a concert, and heard a sleek Frenchman play a piano that made me feel all over in spots. As soon as he sat down on the stool I knew by the way he handled himself

that he understood the machine he was running. He tapped the keys way up one end, just as if they were gauges Ollrl 1, n Tl'O ivt Arl 4-« .nArt if* Ti/i. lm/1 irtnf nn Av*/in<yli TH, /> m 1. « 11V *mvulcu tu OCO XX ■no Irau »» CU/Cl cm;ug,Uf j. XXOil lit? looked up as if he wanted to know how much steam he was carrying, and the next moment he pulled - open the throttle and sailed on to the main line as if he was half an hour late. “You could hear her thunder over culverts and bridges, getting faster and faster, until the fellow rocked about in his seat like a cradle. Sometimes I thought it was old of a ‘ special.’ The fellow worked the keys on the middle division like lightning, and then he flew along the north end of the line until the drivers went around like a buzzsaw, and I got excited. “About the time I was fixing to tell him to cut her off a little he kicked the dampers under the machine wide open, pulled the throttle away back in the tender, and how he did run! I couldn’t stand it any longer, and yelled to him that he was pounding on the left side, and if he wasn’t careful he’d drop his ashpan. “But he didn’t hear. No one heard me. Everything was flying and whizzing. Telegraph poles on the side of the track looked like a row of cornstalks, and trees appeared to be a mudbank, and alf the time the exhaust of the old machine sounded like the hum of a humble-bee; I tried to yell, but my tongue wouldn’t move. “He went, around curves like a bullet, slipped an eccentric, blew out his top plug, went down grades 50 feet to the mile, and not a controlling brake. She went by the meeting point at a mile and a half a minute, and calling for more steam. My hair stood up straight, because I knew the game was up. “Sure enough, coming towards us were the headlights of a heavy train. I heard the crash as the engines met and saw the cars shivered into atoms, people smashed, mangled, and bleeding and gasping for water. I heard another deep crash as the French professor struck the deep keys way down on the lower end of the southern division, and then I came to my senses. There he was at a dead standstill with the door of the fire-box of the machine open, wiping the perspiration off his' face, and bowing to the people before him. If I lived to be a thousand years old I’ll never forget the ride that Frenchman gave mo on a piano.”