de, heard someone wish
somebody else a Merry Christmas, and heard the other person grunt in a
non-committal sort of way. There was the sound of a hall door slamming
somewhere on my floor. After that there was silence--the kind of
silence that you can break off in chunks and taste.

It continued to snow. I reckon I must have sat there an hour or more.

Down in the street four stories below I heard something--music. I raised
the sash and looked out. An Italian had halted in front of the boarding
house with a grind organ and he was turning the crank and the thing was
playing. It wasn't much of a grind organ as grind organs go. I judge it
must have been the original grind organ that played with Booth and
Barrett. It had lost a lot of its most important works, and it had the
asthma and the heaves and one thing and another the matter with it.

But the tune it was playing was My Old Kentucky Home--and Kentucky was
where I'd come from. The Italian played it through twice, once on his
own hook and once because I went downstairs and divided my money with
him.

I regard that as the finest music I ever heard.

As I was saying before, the classical stuff may do for those who like
it well enough to stand it, but the domestic article suits me. I like
the kind of beer that this man Bach turned out in the spring of the
year, but I don't seem to be able to care much for his music. And so far
as Chopin is concerned, I hope you'll all do your Christmas Chopin
early.

_ART_

[Illustration]

In art as in music I am one who is very easily satisfied. All I ask of a
picture is that it shall look like something, and all I expect of music
is that it shall sound like something.

In this attitude I feel confident that I am one of a group of about
seventy million people in this country, more or less, but only a few of
us, a very heroic few of us, have the nerve to come right out and take a
firm position and publicly express our true sentiments on these
important subjects. Some are under the dominion of strong-minded
wives. Some hesitate to reveal their true artistic leanings for fear of
being called low-browed vulgarians. Some are plastic posers and so
pretend to be something they are not to win the approval of the
ultra-intellectuals. There are only a handful of us who are ready and
willing to go on record as saying where we stand.

[Illustration: "WE LOOKED IN VAIN FOR THE KIND OF PICTURES THAT MOTHER
USED TO MAKE AND FATHER U