THE

HE iron of the war entered into no poet soul deeper than into that of the poet here quoted from The London Mercury.

ALL-SOULS' DAY

BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON

Close-wrapped in living thought I stand Where death and daybreak divide the land, Death and daybreak on either hand

For exit and for entry;

While shapes like wind-blown shadows pass,
Lost and lamenting, "Alas, alas,
This body is only shrivelling grass,

And the soul a starlit sentry

Who guards, and as he comes and goes, Points now to daybreak's burning rose, And now toward worldhood's charnel close Leans with regretless warning".

I hear them thus-O thus I hear

My doomed companions crowding near,
Until my faith, absolved from fear,
Sings out into the morning,
And tells them how we travel far,
From life to life, from star to star;
Exult, unknowing what we are;

And quell the obscene derision
Of demon-haunters in our heart
Who work for worms and have no part
In Thee, O ultimate power who art
Our victory and our vision.

MODERN life induces and justifies such moods. The English Review prints it:

SOLITUDE

BY REX RAY

Grant me some nook where I may dream,
Some dainty wood or purling stream,
Where I may pass the dreary hours away
In solitude;

Some sweet secluded spot, near which I may
In silence brood.

Take from me thoughts of loss or gain, Lest those of joy be mixed with pain, And let no soul come near me to disturb My solitude.

For I would be alone, mid moss and herb, Where none intrude.

Then will I listen to the leaves,

And learn what all the feathered thieves

Can find to do with so much stolen time
In solitude.

I'll hark them tell each one his noisy rhyme,
With song imbued.

So would I wish to spend my life,

Away from all that leads to strife,

Jealous alone lest aught, by chance, draw nigh
My solitude.

So would I wish, alone, unseen, to die
Mid Nature rude.

NATURE indulged in moods of caprice apparently, in creating some of its amphibious creatures, and the creatures suffer accordingly when they are used to point a moral, like this case drawn from the London Spectator:

THE FLYING FISH

BY ELLA GUILLEMARD

The silver fish that skims the wave
Believes that he could fly,

And, like the swallow, wheel and turn
And mount up to the sky.

Small silver fish, above whose home
The deep dark waters race,

He strives to rise above the sea
And wing himself in space.

He stretches out his silver fin
And rises up to fly

Till friendly waves do catch him back
And warn him not to try.

For who is he, that he may fly
And rise where others fail?
He only is a little fish
With silver fins and tail.

A SEMI-CONSCIOUS dream state will be recognized in this from the London Spectator.

FOUR CHILDREN

BY ROBERT GRAVES

As I lay quietly in the grass,
Half dreaming, half awake,

I saw four children barefoot pass
Across the tufted brake:

The sky was glass, the pools were glass,
And not a leaf did shake.

The autumn berries clustered thick,
Seldom I met with more;

I thought these children come to pick,
As many picked before;
Each had a long and crooked stick,
And crowns of ash they wore.

But not one berry did they take;
Gliding, I watched them go
Hand in hand across the brake
With sallies to and fro.

So half asleep and half awake
I guessed what now I know.

They were not children, live and rough,
Nor phantoms of the dead,
But spirits woven of airy stuff
By wandering fancy led,
Creatures of silence, fair enough
No sooner seen than sped.

IF this in The Irish Statesman (Dublin) is an apostrophe to the grave, by the same token it is a bitter reflection on life:

THE HOUSE

BY MONK GIBBON
Presently when the stir
Dies in the little street,
When I no longer heed
Chatter or passing feet;
When I have learnt to use
Window and door and bolt,
How to outwit the knave
How to expel the dolt;

No longer mocked by lies
No longer prey to fool,
No longer tyrannised,
I shall begin to rule.

Too much confusion now,
Too wild a discontent,
Too many voices heard,
Servants grown insolent:
Time to assert the will,
Time to make clear my choice,
Time to begin to speak
With a more certain voice:

Ordered at last throughout,
Ridden of bat and mouse,
Presently I shall be
Master in my own house.

THERE is a naive confession here that might suggest a sarcastic taunt to importuned editors, but the good faith of the disappointed poet is disarming. The Quill sets out to make the unpublished poem famous.

TO A REJECTED POEM

BY ELIZABETH FROST REED

Just fourteen times I sent you far away

To editors cold-blooded. They hold sway.
The money that I spent on envelopes

And stamps I ill could spare. My buoyant hopes
However, would not down, and so I sent
You out each time with confidence, more bent
To have you recognized for what you are,—
A lilting lyric singing of a star.

Just fourteen times you have come back to me.
A pink rejection slip reads: "Poetry
Like this we do not need just now.' I take

You up and kiss your creased face; I wake

Anew to your chaste beauty. Now at last

You find a home. Your wandering days have passed.

Child of my heart and brain, I paste you tight
Within my scrapbook out of critics' sight.

JUST how a lark sings must be unknown to the majority of us living in a larkless land. But here in The London Mercury is a suggestion of bird song that may be taken on faith.

LARK TINKLE

BY KENNETH ASHLEY

I and my fathers,
Immemorial fathers,

Fathers, Fathers.

Have sung above this croft

For years and years

For years we've sung.

Our tiny hearts unshaken, Shaken,

Shaken,

By tragedies that wring
Men's hearts with tears-
Men kind our kind

In cruel nets have taken
Taken,

Taken,

Men kind alone Entrap themselves With fears.

WHETHER the need at Sing Sing of a new building for prisoners' cells inspired this in The Commonweal, we do not know. Prison reform has not gone so far but that the hint here given may be taken in other places too:

PRISON CELLS

BY DON C. SEITZ

Six by three and a half,
And seven high;

Such are the holes in which
Men live and die.

Kennels for dogs are these,
Not human souls-
Even if black they be

Paying their doles.

Wages of sin, say you,

Yea, and much more: What part of all they pay Lies at your door? Until the cells grow wide Justice will fail:

Men still have burning hearts Though bound in jail!

B

Old King Cole was a merry old soul

And a merry old soul was he;

He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl, And he called for his fiddlers three.

UT MR. FORD BEATS OLD KING COLE at his own game. Not only three, but as many as thirty-nine fiddlers, he tells the world, have been bidden to Dearborn in the last year and a half to supply him with melodious ammunition for his war on Tin Pan Alley. For Mr. Ford aspires to revive the dances of our granddaddies, with all their innocent, neighborly cavorting, and he is going about it in the methodical, wholesale way that made Detroit famous. One can almost hear him say, with a slight change in the wording of a famous apothem, "Let me make a nation's dances, and I care not who makes its laws." And so, like a troubadour monarch of ancient times, he summons the rival minstrels to his court, thereby giving occasion for the trumpets of Fame to get busy. Witness the case of "Mellie" Dunham, the grizzled old Maine fiddler and maker of snow-shoes-he made the pair on which Peary reached the Pole who has become a national celebrity by the simple process of fiddling for Henry Ford. His triumphal progress with his amiable better-half, attended by a sedulous entourage of reporters and photographers, has fixt the spotlight of publicity upon Mr. Ford's crusade as well as upon himself,

International Newsreel photograph

great triumph of the old American dances is that they have so overwhelmingly approved themselves to the younger American generation. This shows that both the dances and American youth are good at heart. More than that, it increases the sum of pleasure in this land, of which we have never had too much. We have learned to work, but we have somewhat neglected the equally important part of play. We are learning to play in the large-hearted, social and wholesome way of those whose characters and traditions shaped the nation.

Tho the dance has somewhat departed from our practise these recent years, it can not be said to have departed from our art,

literature and music. It was never completely absent from our national thought of merriment and play. Its return argues a better balancing of life in other respects as well.

And the popularizing of the Ford idea seems to be making headway in the capable hands of Maine's champion fiddler, whose full name is Alanson Mellen Dunham, and whose rustic home is at Norway, Maine. Of Mr. Dunham's performance for the motor-car monarch we read in the Boston Post, in a dispatch from its correspondent who journeyed to Dearborn with the Yankee fiddler:

The seventy-two-year-old Pine Tree State farmer and snow-shoe maker from Norway, Maine, fiddled first on his battered old violin that he has played at country dances all over Maine, and then tried a Stradivarius owned by Ford. He played jigs and waltzes, bowing his beloved fiddle without a tremor of nervousness, and when he had a costly Strad and was making it do the "Campbells Are Comin'," he was just as much at ease as if he was fiddlin' for a home-town dance, such as he has been doing all his life.

and his engagement for a vaudeville tour at a handsome salary is expected to quicken a tendency that has already shown itself, they say, in favor of the old-fashioned dances. That tendency is acclaimed triumphantly in Mr. Ford's weekly, the Dearborn Independent, which doubtless reflects its owner's sentiment when it says:

One of the astonishing features of the autumn and early winter has been the wide-spread revival of the old American dances. After long neglect they are now discovered to be the very thing that a jaded generation has been looking for. The old music, the neighborly mingling of people in the square dances, the rollicking reels and joyous jigs, together with the vocal harmony of the calls, are all found to impart a pleasure which the more sophisticated of the manufactured dances and the synthetic music of Tin Pan Alley (N. Y.) can not give.

Twenty years ago the arrival of the new fad in dancing drove tens of thousands of mature dancers from the floor, and the more promiscuous methods adopted for public dancing drove the more reticent away altogether. Now, however, the older and more American dances return with a novelty they could hardly have had except for this rest of two decades. They come again as new, to both the old and the young. To the young they are, of course, all novelty, "the very latest." The play spirit, which the young have vainly sought in the newer forms, has been abundantly found in the classics of the other generations. The

Mellie's playing to-day was in surroundings such as he had never seen before. The beautiful conservatory of the Ford home is far different from the halls where Mellie has been used to playing. But the simple country gentleman with the flowing white mustache, who overnight has leapt into fame the country over by his being invited to come here and play for Ford, was no more disconcerted than he has been by any of the things that have happened to him since he left home last Monday morning.

Mr. and Mrs. Ford, Grandma Dunham, and Professor and Mrs. Benjamin B. Lovett, formerly of Worcester and Hudson, Massachusetts, comprised the audience. Professor Lovett is the musician working with Ford in the automobile manufacturer's effort to revive the old-fashioned dances.

"He plays well," said Mr. Ford as he discust Mellie tonight. "He's just an old-fashioned fiddler, of course, but he played one waltz as good, that is, to my liking at least, as any I ever heard anywhere in the world, one of his own creations, "The Rippling Waves.' He played all the tunes with which he won the championship, and I liked them very much."

Mellie played a second set of tunes for Ford after the little musicale that followed the lunch, and two which especially interested the manufacturer were another waltz and a varsovienne, the latter a dance of two movements.

"He played the varsovienne differently than they play it

hereabouts," said Mr. Ford. "Dunham played the mazurka movement last instead of first, as I have heard it played."

Asked what he thought of Dunham's violin, Ford said: "It is a good one."

The Dunhams had a busy day to-day. This morning they were up long before any of the servants at the exclusive Dearborn Country Club, where they are quartered, and after breakfast they were taken on a tour of the Ford plants. Both of the old folks were amazed at the things they saw. They had never seen a large manufacturing establishment before, and the speed with which the Ford organization worked brought exclamation after exclamation from them. "Gram" nearly had to quit the trip, however, when they reached the glass-making works. The fumes of the sulfur and other chemicals started her coughing and tears rolled from her eyes. But she refused to quit and she was quite herself when she had lunched with Ford and his wife at noon.

Ford, when he spent more than an hour this morning with the three Boston newspapermen who are here with the Dunhams, disclosed that Mellie and his invitation to play here had considerably exercised the automobile manufacturer. He does not at all relish the fuss that has been made over the coming of the Dunhams. In fact, Mr. Ford said the invitation came only after Mellie had written him, telling of winning the championship, and then Mr. Ford, to quote his own words, "asked one of the boys to write and ask him to come here, as I have done with many other fiddlers whom we wish to study so that we may 'standardize' our revival of the old-time dances."

Ford's move to bring back the old-time steps is being conducted with the same thoroughness as to detail that has

"There," he said, lowering fiddle and bow with a flourish. "That's the way I played it. I hadn't quite finished the last piece when they called 'Time.' 'Rippling Waves' is my own composition. It's a waltz. I've made up lots of tunes-hornpipes, gallops and waltzes-just from watching people dance." The violin was laid to rest. Mell dropt into a near-by armchair-the one in which he had been rocked as a baby. "I always loved music," the old man reminisced, "especially violin music. It's so pretty. When I was twelve I heard a boy I knew practise on his fiddle. I used to try it once in a while. His father heard me and made me a present of a fiddle. It was a cheap one, but I loved it. In those days a fiddle was thought to be next to the devil. My father wouldn't have let me play

featured his production of motor-cars. His chat with the reporters from Boston this morning was followed by his doing a thing almost unprecedented in his plant. He personally invited and conducted us through the place, a courtesy which heretofore has been reserved for notables. After he had chatted at considerable length in his private office, he led the way out into the plant, and, after he had shown the various details of his remarkable printing-plant, where the floor is as spotless as a scoured plate, he led the way into the dancing-place at the end of the building, where he holds his old-time dances.

Frank Sibley, the veteran reporter from The Globe, told him the story of a ditty that is Sib's favorite. It is "The Wreck of the Julie Plante."

"I never knew there was a melody to that," said Ford. "By the way, have you heard the new Victrola?"

And, like a child showing a new toy, he selected a record and cranked the machine and commented on the various tones as the machine ground out its tune.

"By the way," he inquired of Sib, "can you play that 'Wreck of the Julie Plante' ?"

Sib could and he did, and the auto king that they picture as a cold, distant sort of person sat with legs crossed atop the case of a dulcimer while Sibley played and sang the French-Canadian ditty and a couple of more songs. Ford sat back and smiled and beat time, and at the end applauded.

Something of the ancient fiddler's philosophy as well as his art is reflected by a writer in the New York Times, who made an earlier visit to the Dunhams in their home. He tells of his impressions after listening to "Turkey in the Straw," the "Devil's Dream," "Boston Fancy," "Rippling Waves," "The Campbells Are Comin'," and "Jingle Bells," as interpreted by the Yankee virtuoso. Concerning which we read:

The quick succession of dances create an atmosphere of swaying branches and of laughing sunshine. The whole room vibrated with rhythm. The short figure in blue denim overalls rocked to and fro, keeping time with the tapping foot.

if he'd known I had it. But my mother was sympatheticshe helped me hide it, and let me practise behind the barn.

"No, I never took a lesson. I saw a picture once of Ole Bull, and I studied the way he held his violin. That's all I know about technique. I don't pretend to be a musician. I'm just a fiddler. Notes mean little or nothing to me. Everything I play, I've learned by hearin' others. One thing I do know, that's rhythm."

Mellie is a farmer. The gist of his reply to Mr. Ford's first letter was this: "I'll come as soon as I can. I live on a farm, and you know we farmers must get ready for winter." That is why Mr. and Mrs. Dunham could not fix the date of their visit to Dearborn earlier than December.

Mell had his chores to do. The meat had to be butchered; the larder had to be got ready for the long months to come. The farm-over 100 acres in size has been in the family's possession for nearly a century, and the quaint old New England homestead with its wide door, flanked on either side by narrow glass panes, has housed Dunhams for an even longer time. When Mell's father moved from "up the road," the house followed him on rollers, drawn by twenty-five horses.

Jazz music doesn't get "under the old fiddler's skin," to use his own words. "It has no rhythm and melody to my way of thinking. Perhaps they're all right, but I don't think much of these modern dances. This jazzing is not so good for young people. It lets 'em loaf too much. They ought to be kept movin' -you know what I mean. Harry Lauder's got the real stuff." At the mention of syncopation his face became a blank. "I said I was no musician. There was a time, you know, when they said of mosquitoes that they were as thick as fiddlers in hell. They may be able to say that there are still plenty of mosquitoes on earth, but I'm sure there are fewer fiddlers goin' to hell-at least of the old-fashioned kind. They are droppin' away, and the new ones can't play the same."

But Mellie has great faith in the younger generation of to-day. And he ought to know, for he has nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Moreover his wife agrees with him, judging from this:

"The boys and the girls that are growin' up now are a fine lot." It was Mrs. Dunham who was speaking. "The girls are much healthier, with their low necks and short sleeves, their skirts fourteen inches off, no corsets, and their bobbed hair." (Mrs. Dunham herself is in the fashion!) To all of which the male member of the family nodded his approval.

But according to him, modern young people do not have as good a time as young folks did in the old days. In the era of "kitchen whangs," parties began at eight o'clock, after supper. Anywhere from six to twenty couples would be invited. In the winter they would come across the snowy roads in their sleds, while in the summer they would jolt over the ruts in carts or come on horseback. "Break-downs" were always held in the ample, immaculate kitchens, where New England hospitality was freely dispensed.

Dancing continued until ten, or thereabout; then followed an

intermission. Couples had time to flirt. Supper was servedpie (in season), doughnuts, baked beans and many other delectable dishes-and the fiddler was given a chance to rest. After that they returned to their rollicking jolly dances, and more often than not the sun was peeping over the hilltops when the merrymaking came to an end. "Nowadays they stop at twelve and one o'clock." It was said in a tone of pity.

Round dances in vogue at the "kitchen whangs" were the waltz, the polka, the schottische and the varsovienne. Most fun of all were the contra-dances.

"I can tell 'em all with my eyes closed," said Mr. Dunham

that they may live for future generations. Their origin is, more often than not, entirely unknown to the men who have played them countless times; like Mellie, they have heard them on other fiddles and repeated them on their own.

Unquestionably, says the writer, many of the melodies and the steps of the so-called social group dances have come from England and Scotland. On the other hand, some of our country dances are a direct outgrowth of the American soil, having a quality all their own. And he remarks:

They embody the very spirit of funmaking. The movement is quick, and the rhythm so catching as to be almost hypnotic. These melodies were written to lure alike grandmother by the fireside and the girl not yet in her 'teens. If America has folk-songs they are to be found in these early and somewhat homely tunes, created (one could scarcely say composed) for the fiddle.

What could be more fascinating than some of the names given those simple dances that fell for the first time from some fiddler's bow by the roaring fire of a kitchen stove, or in a barn filled with the sweet scent of hay? Among the favorites of yesterday were "Boston Fancy," "Old Zip Coon," "The Green Mountain Volunteers,' "Lady Washington's Reel," "Speed the Plough," "Weevily Wheat," "The Arkansas Traveler," and countless others equally quaint.

All last winter Mellie played at public dances, and when the summer came he was called to the pavilions to provide music for resorters. He goes wherever he is wanted. "It's to help the bunch," he explains. Then he draws a photograph out of his fiddle case and introduces the "bunch"-the nine grandchildren and the one great-granddaughter for whose upbringing he and Mrs. Dunham are responsible. "They're. all musicians,' he proudly exclaims, "tho we have only been able to give a musical education to one, Cherry-she accompanies me on the organ."

and his fiddle stealthily emerged from its box. In another minute Mrs. Dunham was on her feet-balancing, swinging, promenading with an imaginary partner.

Of a sudden the old farmhouse sitting-room seemed peopled with whirling couples-the men with their trousers tucked into high boots; the women, ample of bosom and small of waist, flirting their long skirts as they whisked about the floor.

The first bars of "Pop Goes the Weasel" calls the dancers to attention. They take partners and form into two lines, facing each other. The first couple is off, down the outside and back again; down the center and as swiftly back to position. The time is a gallop. There is a great freedom of motion; a swaying of hips and shoulders; a tossing of the head.

Then, "Hands around the lady!" calls the fiddler. The first couple is off again. Hands stretched until they meet and clasp. Advancing to the second woman, a man swings her half around to the left, so that she faces the place she has just quitted.

The music is bounding forward. "Pop!" At just the right moment she slips under the raised hands of the couple, and, pirouetting, is again in the spot from which she started. So it goes, until every one has had a chance, and the whole company has promenaded around the room.

There was no getting stuck, when our grandparents danced reels and quadrilles. With true social instinct they saw to it that no one was left out of the fun. Every lady was given a whirl. While the strain of "Pop Goes the Weasel" is repeated with the even monotony of a hand-organ grinding out the same tune over and over again, some one is caroling the words:

Concerning the impression made on Mr. Ford by the Maine fiddler's composition, "Rippling Waves," we learn that the manufacturer would not allow Mellie to start homeward until the Dearborn dance orchestra had mastered it, with consequences thus described by The Christian Science Monitor:

Mr. Ford's orchestra seized Mellie's waltz, the musicians harmonized it, and Mellie's fiddle filled every inch of the vast dancing place with the air as he played it. The dancers applauded and again Mellie played the waltz. Again came the applause and again the champion fiddler played his own composition as he smiled his pleasure.

Mr. Ford and Mrs. Ford joined in the dancing, and while Mellie's evening was climaxed when he played his waltz, another proud moment came when Mr. Ford asked Mrs. Dunham to dance with him. Mrs. Dunham did, and Mellie fiddled and looked down with pride as the wife of the Maine fiddler and one of the nation's wealthiest men danced.

Benjamin Lovett, of Worcester, is compiling a book of the old dances for Mr. Ford. Dances of the days when each household had its published book of dances, with full directions for the steps and figures, and of which there are only a few left now as library curiosities. Mellie's own dance, "The Rippling Waves," is going into the book as "Dunham's Waltz."

Mellie Dunham has watched many a couple do the "Fisher's Hornpipe." He knows, without stopping to think, that it requires the first couple to step smartly down the outside of the figure, then up. Then down the center and up. Cast off. He knows when it is time for the call "Swing those hands quite round," even tho some one else does the calling. He knows the "Right and Left," too. Then there is "Speed the Plow." They do that in Maine, too. Even the children like to do it. First couple cross over. First lady balance to second gentleman and turn, at the same time the first gentleman balancing to the second lady and turning. Then the first couple down the center (on opposite sides) and cast off.

Every one in Dearborn knows "Pop Goes the Weasel" now almost as well as Mr. Dunham knows it. A gay sight it is, with the first couple chasséing down the outside and back, then down