made
Chicago his home in 1882, afterward moving to New York, where he
served as a musical critic on one of the daily papers for many years.

De Koven has been chief purveyor of comic opera to his generation, and
for so ideal a work as "Robin Hood," and such pleasing constructions
as parts of his other operas ("Don Quixote," "The Fencing Master,"
"The Highwayman," for instance), one ought to be grateful, especially
as his music has always a certain elegance and freedom from vulgarity.

Of his ballads, "Oh, Promise Me" has a few opening notes that remind
one of "Musica Proibita," but it was a taking lyric that stuck in the
public heart. His setting of Eugene Field's "Little Boy Blue" is a
work of purest pathos and directness. His version of "My Love is Like
a Red, Red Rose" is among the best of its countless settings, and "The
Fool of Pamperlune," the "Indian Love Song," "In June," and a few
others, are excellent ballad-writing.

Victor Harris is one of the few that selected New York for a
birthplace. He was born here April 27, 1869, and attended the College
of the City of New York, class of 1888. For several of his early years
he was well known as a boy-soprano, whence he graduated into what he
calls the "usual career" of organist, pianist, and teacher of the
voice. In 1895 and 1896 he acted as the assistant conductor to Anton
Seidl in the Brighton Beach summer concerts. He learned harmony of
Frederick Schilling.

Harris is most widely known as an accompanist, and is one of the best
in the country. But while the accompaniments he writes to his own
songs are carefully polished and well colored, they lack the show of
independence that one might expect from so unusual a master of their
execution.

Except for an unpublished one-act operetta, "Mlle. Maie et M. de
Sembre," and a few piano pieces, Harris has confined himself to the
writing of short songs. In his twenty-first year two of unequal merits
were published, "The Fountains Mingle with the River" being a taking
melody, but without distinction or originality, while "Sweetheart" has
much more freedom from conventionality and inevitableness.

[Music: To N.N.H.

Song from Omar Khayyam.

VICTOR HARRIS, Op. 16, No. 3.

Oh! threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain--
_This_ Life flies,
One thing is certain, and the rest is Lies!
The Flower that once has blown for ever, for ever dies.

Copyright, 1898, by Edward Sch