had been there a week, we discovered that he had a saxophone. No one
had ever heard or eaten a saxophone, but we looked it up, and when we
found out what it was, we made a rush for him. At the next practice he
appeared with a bright silver instrument covered with two bushels of
keys and played a solo which sounded like three clarionets with the
croup. We wept for joy and elected him leader on the spot.

This caused Sim Askinson to resign, of course, and he took Ad and Ed
Smith with him, and they remained in dignified and awful silence for two
years. But we didn't care. One saxophone was worth five baritones, and
while Williams was in town, we were an object of envy to all of the
other bands around. We changed our name to the Homeburg Saxophone Band,
and the way we rubbed it into Paynesville was pitiful. He was a little
fellow, Williams was, and short of wind, which caused him to gasp a good
deal during the variation parts. But he was willing. There was no shirk
about him. After a year our program usually consisted of eleven
saxophone solos and some other piece which could be done almost entirely
on the saxophone, and the jealous Paynesvillains used to ask why we used
nineteen men to play the rests when one man could have produced as much
silence at far less expense.

Those were glorious years; but of course they didn't last. Williams got
to resigning at the foundry just for the pleasure of having us come down
and plead with the proprietor to raise his pay. Finally he resigned so
much that the proprietor fired him, and then we had to take our caps in
hand and wheedle the Smiths and Askinson back into the band. I haven't
belonged for years, but they are still there. When I drop in at
practice, as many of the alumni do, Askinson greets me cordially and
takes some young cub's horn away from him, so I can sit in. It is just
like old times, especially when Ed Smith lays down his horn after a
slight altercation with some one and goes home never to come back--just
as he has done for the last thirty years.

That's the worst of music. One's art, you know, has so much influence
over one's temper. To see our band soaring majestically down Main Street
and playing "Canton Halifax" in one great throbbing rough-house of
melody you would never believe that anything but brotherly love existed
between the players. As a matter of fact, we never wasted any harmony
among ourselves. We didn't have any to spare. It took all we had to
produc