's done it."

MRS. NEWRICHE--"I believe our next-door neighbors on the right are as
poor as church mice, Hiram."

MR. NEWRICHE--"What makes you think so?"

MRS. NEWRICHE--"Why, they can't afford one of them mechanical
piano-players; the daughter is taking lessons by hand."--_Puck_.

MUSICIANS

"Excuse me," said the detective as he presented himself at the door
of the music academy, "but I hope you'll give me what information you
have, and not make any fuss."

"What do you mean?" was the indignant inquiry.

"Why, you see, we got a tip from the house next door that somebody
was murdering Wagner, and the chief sent me down here to work on the
case."

Pianist Rachmaninoff told in his New York flat the other day a story
about his boyhood.

"When I was a very little fellow," he said, "I played at a reception
at a Russian count's, and, for an urchin of seven, I flatter
myself that I swung through Beethoven's 'Kreutzer Sonata' pretty
successfully.

"The 'Kreutzer,' you know, has in it several long and impressive
rests. Well, in one of these rests the count's wife, a motherly old
lady, leaned forward, patted me on the shoulder, and said:

"'Play us something you know, dear.'"

There was nobody who could play the violin like Smifkins--at least so
he thought--and he was delighted when he was asked to play at a local
function.

"Sir," he said to the host, "the instrument I shall use at your
gathering is over two hundred years old."

"Oh, that's all right! Never mind," returned the host; "no one will
ever know the difference."

MUSICAL STUDENT--"That piece you just played is by Mozart, isn't it?"

HURDY-GURDY MAN--"No, by Handel."

When Paderewski was on his last visit to America he was in a Boston
suburb, when he was approached by a bootblack who called:

"Shine?"

The great pianist looked down at the youth whose face was streaked
with grime and said:

"No, my lad, but if you will wash your face I will give you a
quarter."

"All right!" exclaimed the youth, who forthwith ran to a neighboring
trough and made his ablutions.

When he returned Paderewski held out the quarter, which the boy took
but immediately handed back, saying:

"Here, Mister, you take it yourself and get your hair cut."

NAMES, PERSONAL

"Why do you call the baby Bill?"

"He was born on the first of the month."

In an Ohio town is a colored man whose last name is Washington.

Heaven has blest him w