The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 22, 1901, Page 26

<+ R | CRAVING FOR SYMPHONIES ALLAYS DOUBTS CONCERNING THE CiTY’S MUSICAL FUTURE BY BLANCHE PARTINGTON. JOSEF HOFMANN, THE GREAT PIANIST, WHOSE EARLY APPEAR- | | ANCE IN THIS CITY WILL BE WELCOME NEWS TO MUSIC LOV- | | ERS OF SAN FRANCISCO. ERHAPS the most hopeful local | conductor to essay symphony concerts, happening of all the musical year, | Adolph Bauer, Gustave Hinrichs and Max not even excepting the Grau grand | Hirschfeld being the preceding ones. Mr. opera season, was the symphony | Steindorff’s excellent concert of last week. The new lezder and his men were greeted by a surprisingly large house, in foce of slmost every discouraging likelihood against it—Christmas holiday shopping, the financial shortage incident upon the grand opera season, the afternoon per- formance and the like. But the affair sat- isfactorily proved, among other things, that the people are symphony hungry, and when a city is hungry for symphonies there is little to fear for its musical fu- ture. The next concert, of Friday afternoon, Jsnueary 10, will doubtless attract a much | larger audience, but the Symphony Soci- ety has every reason to be gratified with the success of its first venture. Almost all of the leading musiclans turned up at the concert, as well as the numerous ama- teurs of distinction that the town boasts, and from a succes de curiosite the affair became 2 genuine sucess d’estime as the good work of leader and orchestra made itelf felt. Also, the strength of the fash- ionable contingent was distinctly encour- aging and makes it reasonable to indulge tle hope that the order of things that pre- valls in Boston symphony circles m: come the rule here. A Boston socie: man regards her seats at the sy certs as the first necessity of so ction, lceks upon her box at the Metropolitan Opera House as the inevitable, if agree- able, tax on her social position. This hap- pens to be the best thing under present conditions, unfortunately, for soclety pays the piper, while the rest of us get the benefit. Only so, under the present re- gime, can good music be given, but in some future day of sanity. when it fs rec- ognized as being as vitally essential to a rounded and harmonious life as the mat- utinal bath, music will be as much a mu- nicipal care as the city water system, as beneficently and as widely useful. Mean- time, we must be grateful to Maecenas, or rather to Madame Maecenas, who shoulders most of the art patronage of the day, and hope she will continue to re- gard the San Francisco Symphony Soci- ety as her best opportunity for usefulness to the good, the true and the beautiful. It is the best that we have here at least and worthy of all support. e ‘biw Naturally enough the chief interest of the symphony concert centered in the new leader, Paul Steindorffl. As every one knows, Mr. Steindorff is the conductor of the Tivoli orchestra, and the fourth Tivoli ADVERTISEMENTS. Dianos —AT— REDUCED PRICES. A few of the 28 instruments used by GRAU OPERA CO. artists still on hand. These, together with our immense stock of 100 other Pianos, will be offered for sale until Xmas at BIG REDUCTIONS. CLARK WISE & G0., 41 GEARY STREET, Cor. Grant Ave. SOLE mm{i’c’:?z; Gaitazs. Stella Music Bo work during the grand opera season insured a strong in- terest in his symphony effort, and the ex- pectations zroused thereby were much | more than realized. The composition of ! the orchestra, to begin with, shows the new leader to be possessed of uncommon skill in handling men. He has the best | orchestral material in town, lacking only | a few musicians of note, who wiil doubt- | less be gathered in later, and has fitted | each man to his place with an ingenuity that speaks volumes for his capacity as a leader. As a conductor Mr. Steindorff shows an eminent dignity, grasp and poise, as well | delicacy and refinement. Inevitably it a somewhat more rigid effort than | his operatic work, plasticity being one of the last qualities obtainable in orchestral | achievement, but its lack of freedom was | fully compensated for by the solldity, | smoothness and correctness of the inter- | pretations. The other things will come | later, the finer nuance, ease, abandon, | elasticity, climacteric power with rhyth- | mic witchery that yleld themselves only | to long and faithful wooing, but an essen- tially right beginning has been made. There is every reason to be gratified with | the start in life of the new orchestra and every reason for confidence in its leader. S The orchestra contains fifty-five mem- bers, distributed as follows: Ten first vio- lins, eight second violins, six violas, five violoncellos and seven double basses in the wood wind has three flutes, two clarionettes and two bas- rombones and a bass tuba. , snare and kettledrums and cym- mplete the list. 1g the players are to be found such names as Giulio Minett] (concertmelster), Ferdinand Stark, Hother Wismer, Sam- | uel Savannah, C. Heinsen, B. Jaulus, F. S. Gutterson, P. Friedhofer, A. Wefss, | Lovell Langstroth, W. Angermuende, L. | Newbauer, A. Paulsen, J. L. Mundwyler, E. and C. Schlott, J. Wrba, E. Keller, C. | von der Mehden, W. H. Colverd, A. Ron- | covieri, C. Goerlich, M. and §. Davis, E. Lada, H. Slering, E. Carlmueller and J. E. Jesephs. They compese a band that any | director might be proud of, a remarkable | bond to be found out In these Western | wilds. The next concert will have a heavier | programme to test their strength, but | they will not be found wanting. Meantime it behooves all the friends of good muslc | to be up and doing. ! . . Josef Hofmann will be here in Fepru- ary. He is the first of the great arfists who will be heard here during the coming vear. i . . The California Conservatory gave one of its always interesting recitals on Tues- day evening last at Sherman & Clay Hall with the plano pupils of Otto Bendix as executants. The work throughout was thoroughly intelligent, capable and sin- cere, and in some instances more than that. Miss Josie Coonan shows a strong musical instinct, and her rendering of the Hummel number was full of color, sym- pathy and judgment, as well as technical sureness. Miss Lily Hansen in a Chopin “Ballade” (No. 2) showed herself pos- sessed of considerable technical fluency and refinement, without much poise. Rose ‘Woolf is well equipped technically and temperamentally, as her “Rigoletto Fan- tasie” showed. Lydia Reinstein, whose quickness in recovering herself after a lapse of memory in her Beethoven num- ber showed an unusual presence of mind, has a clean, sure touch and good style of the bravura order. She frequently per- mits her accompaniment in the bass to overbalance the upper melodies. Miss Drynan and Mrs. Aylwin gave a Chopin rondo for two pianos with taste, and the Misses Toklas and Hansen gave with sym- pathy the Reinecke “Impromptu” on Schumann’s ‘“Manfred.” Miss Edna Dry- nan concluded the programme with a good reading of the Chopin “Andante Spi- anato” and “Polonaise.” ———t Paris supplies free of cost sulphurous baths to all persors engaged in handling lead. THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 22. 1901. THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL. JOHN D, SPRECKELS, Proprietor. Address Communications to W, S. LEAKE, Manager SUNDRAY .. inre ks bobisiebsalt ins b s b o AL Pl R e R A N DECEMBER 22, 1901 Publication Offce......... Market and Third, S. F. BARBARISM AT ALTURAS. ROSS as were the outrages committed against California law by the Modoc lynchers, they were not more offensive to justice or to the dignity of law than are those which have been of well nigh daily occurrence in the court at Alturas, where the alleged offenders have Leen brought to trial for the crime. Itis high time those rowdy wrang- lings and scenes of violence in the court be brought under the condemnation of public opinion. It is not by such methods as those which have thus far prevailed in the trial that law can be en- forced or justice vindicated. Day after day the reports of the proceedings of the trial reveal some new source of con- fusion and lawlessness that verges upon barbarism. Insults are bandied back and forth among | witnesses, lawyers and the Judge himself. At one time a witness sprang from his seat and made a bodily attack upon the attorney conducting the cross-examination. At another time the Judge from the bench charged that the attorneys for the defense desire his: assassination; and when one of them declared he had never tried to assassinate any human being, the Judge in substance retorted that he had. All these charges and counter charges are made with bitterness and vindictiveness. They | fill the court with turmoil, and the spectators watch the trial more as if it were a wrangle that | might lead at any moment to a fight than as a solemn hearing of evidence and law in a case in | which the life of a man is at stake. The Judge at times makes an effort to enforce respect for | his court, but he makes it in a manner that increases the disrespect and augments the violence of | the attorneys to whom his threats are addressed. In short the scene is anything but one of dig- ; nity, or even of decency. A gang of wraugling “pugs” trying to bulldoze a referee would not be more coarse or hoodlum-like in their conduct than are these representatives of California law in the Alturas courtroom. | Lynching such as that which was committed in Modoc County, and for which certain per- sons are now being tried, is but a violation of law for which law officers and the law-abiding people of the community are not respousible, unless by a neglect to bring the offenders to justice they make themselves indorsers of the criminals. Flagrant outrages like those reported from the Alturas court on the other hand are a degradation of law in the very temple of justice by the very men who are sworn to uphold justice. - The bench and the bar of Modoc are not responsible | for the lynching, but they are certainly responsible for the degradation of the court. All Califor- nia suffers when such scenes are permitted within her courtrooms. They are ap outrage to civil- ization itself. Public sentiment in the State at large cannot tolerate barbarism of that kind, and if the people of Modoc desire the respect of their fellow-Californians they must devise some means of enforcing respect for the dignity of the courts. GENERALS IN POLITICS. NCIDENT to the discussion of free trade with Cuba the country is being furnished the in- teresting spectacle of several generals of the army in politics. | General Wood has made special*pilgrimage from Havana to Washington to instruct Congress in its obligation to give “stable prosperity to Cuba,” and incidentally vote out of | the pockets of American land-owners an annual profit of about $200 per acre to Cuban land- | owners. He returned to the island declaring that his mission had succeeded and a panic in Ha- vana would be averted. There are signs that are admonitory reading for members of Con- | gress that say there will be a panic at the polls in many a district if General Wood's prophecy come true. - The farmers and planters are not devoted to one-sided protection any longer. Time was that they were content to feed manufacturing labor and were happy in the belief that it paid them better prices out of the better wages caused by protection of manufactures. But the grow- ing . agricultural surplus has compelied the farmer to seek a market abroad, where he has to sell in competition with the world and at the world’s price. But he has to buy at home and:pay the protected price for manufactured articles. He has but one way to get a part of the benefit -of protection under these circumstances. He also must have a protected monopoly of the home market, so that he, too, can recoup himself for the low price of his exported surplus by the high price permitted by protection. He demands in that respect equality with the manufacturer, and unless he gets it his interest in protection is likely to decline. The time has gone by in which he is to stand for American altruism, ready to do and be “done,” that manufacturers may flourish. He desires to do some of the flourishing himself. He is getting protection on sugar and tobacco. They diversify his crops in many States. He is also protected on rice, and can produce it from the Carolinas to the Brazos. Every acre in these three crops is an acre withdrawn from corn and wheat, o the relief of the cereal farmer, so that protection for sugar, rice and tobacco favorably affects every acre of farm land whether planted in those crops or not. The American farmer is not a peasant. He is an international merchant. calling and guards his own interests. He also dominates Congress by his vote. But the generals in politics are proceeding as if the American farmer were indeed “a brother of the ox.” They are appealing to politicians and professional sentimentalists, those chronic sympathizers, whose tears' flow at a word, and who are anxious to lift up the lowly every- where outside their own country—at the expense of others. As General Wood sailed away to Cuba another general appeared on a tour among the Chambers of Commerce in the Middle West. His credential is his military service in Cuba. He is instructing mercantile bodies in their duty t6 make Cuba prosperous. His statement of the obli- gation we assumed toward Cuba reads like the forty-acres-and-a-mule programme for the freed- men at the close of our Civil War. His knowledge of economics is confined to the payroll he signs for his salary, and to the conversion of his commutations into cash. He seems to regard this country as a cow that is always fresh, and his duty to be the bringing in of strange calves to suck her. The farmers who feed the cow are not considered in his economic philosophy. Per haps it will be as well for our able generals to confine themselves to military matters and leave our civil policy and public economics alone. THE STATE AND TUBERCULOSIS. He is wise in his T is surprising that so many people contest the right of the States and the nation to co-ordi- nate in measures for the extirpation of consumption. Whenever that policy is mentioned it is treated in some quarters as an invasion of personal liberty. But to invoke the power of the State against the evil is well within public authority. The same people who view such a proposition with alarm are the first to run to the State to isolate smallpox, cholera and the plague, to disinfect where they have been, cven to the destruction of buildings, or entire blocks of buildings, by fire, and payment for them out of the public treasury. Yet consumption slays more people annually than the combined destruction of life wrought by smallpox, cholera and plague together, not excluding the ravages of the two last in Asia. One case of smallpox in any State of this Union causes a panic, and the local and State Boards of Health are called in and the most rigorous legal measures are at once adopted. The patient is taken from his home, against his protest and that of his family, and confined in a pest- house. The law denounces him as a menace to the lives of others, and his personal rights are wholly suspended and his personal liberty denied. Yet smallpox is innocuous compared to con- sumption. Statistics show that the cases of consumption, constantly in existence, the place of each victim vacated by death constantly taken by a freshly stricken recruit, run in numbers of from five thousand in the smaller States to five hundred thousand in the more populous! Suppose that cholera. smallpox or the plague made such a showing! Would any one dis- pute the right of the State to use the most stern measures to fight either? It isno overstatement to say that consumption is deadlier than either. It is endemic everywhere. It takes no vacation. It is not sporadic nor epidemic. It is in every county in the United States, and, in some, in every township. It goes on in summer and in winter. Neither heat nor cold checks it. It shrivels the physical power of its victim, removes him from the productive forces of the country, affects un- favorably the economic strength of the whole community, Therefore this disease impairs the national power. To concert public measures to check it, to arrest its progress, to exterminate it, is among the highest duties of government. For what do we pay and maintain boards of health, if not to protect the community against this scourge? o - : \ GENIUS OF JOE JEFFERSON ? NOT MANIFEST IN ASPIRING | SON OF FAMOUS OLD ACTOR | BY GUIZARD | ANGWILL somewhere discourses with point and eloquerce upon the I forget his ad- cholce of parents. | vice to those intending to become the sons of great men, but imagine ! it must have been Mr. Punch's to those about to ‘marry—“Don’t!” There Is an art in being the son of a great man (h.lvt seems particularly difficult of mast!‘r): and aracteristically unapproachable by those who have most need of its re- sources. One of its chief laws scems to consist in making sure of a maternal pro- genitor of distinction, and further, in do- | ing anything else than what your father did before vou. There is no question that Thomas Jef- | ferson, the son of Joe of that ilk, has taken every care to provide himself ex- cellently in the first regard, but he has | vitally errcd in the second and equally important requisite to a virtuoso-like son- ship to a great man. An actor father, the son also devotes himself to Thespis; the father a wizard in two roles, the son would also seek fame in one of these; old “Rip,”” with the characteristic habit of surrounding himself with dramatic make- weights and young “Rip” with the iden- tical same inexpensive vice, In exag- gerated form. The Rip Van Winkle of Thomas Jeffer- son is, as a matter of fact, and almost of course, a failure. Naturally he has the | technique of the character to the last minute requirement, the gesture, accent, cap, coat and trews of the lovable no | *count. But there Is no leg in the breeches, | as the painters say, no heart under the | vest, no head under the cap. It is a walking technique, a dramatic thing that casts ne shadow, without light, life or body and finally an affair of misused con- science. That Mr. Jefferson has the mi- metlc art is undeniable. His “Rip” Is an excellent imitation of his father’'s. That he has industry and consclence is equally unmistakable, no smallest detail of the mechanics of the character being neg- lected. That he has good taste, ample intelligence and much individual charm | is also not to be denied, but that his | brains, conscience and emotional talents | are worse than lost on “Rip Van Winkle” —perhaps on the stage at all—is no less a matter of certaintv. It would have made a difference of mo- ment to the show as a whole if the dra- matic furniture surrounding Jefferson had suggested only for a charitable moment that its legs were long enough to reach the ground. There is absolutely no ex- cuse for such a company—save the mark! The Jeffersons are of the plutocracy—if a modest million counts for anything in this billionalredom—and to offer with a warmed-over “Rip’” the dregs and orts of the green room is a ‘leetle” too much even for the stomach of gratefulest mem- ory. That much for a possible pecuniary reason. If, on the other hand, the com- pany represents a desire for contrast to his own luminosity on the part of the star, then it can only be said that he is ircredibly modest. An actor requiring as ghadow to his own brilllance the archa- typal badness of Mr, Jefferson’s assist- antd would better put up his shutters and go to selling peanuts for his daily beer. Indubitably Mr. Jefferson Kknows very much better; still, it's a free country and if he can gather In the dust as the son of his father even with these raggedest of retalners, one can only say with ad- miring envy, “Let her ‘Rip,’ Jefferson!" . . s God rest you, merry Rentlemen, Let nothing ycu dismay— Not even the Christmas shows that are crowding thick and “ast upon us, The theatrical brethren ars all seeking to out- do thelr noble efforts at entertainment this week as a bribe to catch the last lonely nickel in i.e holiday pocket, The Columbia leads the serious enter- tainment of the season, with beautiful Mary Mannering as Janic® Merelith. Every one knows the book—the one with the handsome miniature on the back—and the play is said to be a faithful transcrip- tlon of its beauties. Whateve- the play- wright has made of the play Miss Man- nering is sure to be interestirg, and it we .are to have any good things during the summer season we shall have to bor- Lrow a reluctant nickel with which to wei- ONE OF THE ACTORS WHO | WILL SUPPORT MARY MAN- NERING. come ‘‘Janice Meredith.” H. S. Northrup and Charles Cherry are among her at- tendant satellites. Choice candies, Townsend's, Palace Hotel.* Ex. strong hoarhound candy. Townsend's* Cal. Glace Fruit 50c per Ib at Townsend's. * Thousands of pounds of California glace fruits ready for shipping. Townsend's. * Townsend's famous broken and plain mixed candy, 2 1bs 25c. 639 Market street.* e e— Time to express Townsend's California glace fruits to your Eastern friends. * e Thousands of fire-etched boxes to select from at Townsend's, 627 Market, Palace* _———— Guillet's Christmas extra mince ples, fce cream and cake. %05 Larkin st.: phone East 198, * ———— Romeo and Juliet in Chinatown. See Christmas Wasp California. the illustrating Cosmopolitan Eleven thousand people are engaged m making lamp chimneys throughout the United States, Special information supplied dally to business houses and public men by the Press Clipping Pureau (Allen’s), nts gomery street. Telephone Main 1020 * Two-pound handsome Sxe-etched box of California Glace Fruits, sxpress charges prepaid to Chicago, New l’.fil and East- ern points, $1.35. Time to sen: 'w. Thou. sands of packages ready. 9 ket st ¢ Jury trials are going out of favor In England, OQut of 454 cases in the xl;n 's Bench at the present Trinity session ?fi% are to be tried without a jury. ' “The Ovefland Limited,” via Union Pacifio R. R., 13 the only train making conasction 'a Chicago with the fast Express Trains leaving Chicago in the morning for New York. By this Route you can remain in San Francisco until 10 a. m., reaching Chicago six hours quicker than on any other Limited Train. This, train ruos Every Day in the Year. D. W. Hitcheock, Gen. Agt. No. 1 Montgomery st.. e ————— ADVERTISEMENTS. Kohler & Chase can save you $50to $ro0 ona PIANO Easy Terms of Payment Choice of Knabe, Fisch- er and eight other lead- ing makes Headquarters' 26, 28 acd 30 O'F; 6, asrell Street