HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1924-04-10, Page 3• No Easy Job to Play to' Children's:
Audience, Says Fampus Pianist.
There ere movements in various
'parts of Canada and the United: States
to bring more and better music to the
children. Various methods are adopt-
ed, chief of whidh perhaps is instruc-
tion in music in the schools, Other
-methods are through organ .recitals,
music memory contests, children's con-
Certs, etc.
Guy Maier, the celebrated pianist, is
a strong advocate of the last mention--'
ed method, although he states that it
is no easy job to hold the attention of
an audience of children, His particu-
lar reason for saying this is that you
not 'only have to play to the -children,
'but you have to talk to them as well.
"A singer, of course, he .says, "has
the . advantage of words, and some-
times of costume as well, but a pianist
has to make up his story and tell it,
'too. But even at that It is the greatest
leossil)le fun.
"The principal thing is to get en
rapport with your children, and once
you have achieved that, the sky is the
limit to whatyou can do, I have play-
ed them an,entire program of the most
dmas.tic ultra -modern things, and had
therm love It. I have given them Bach,
Beethoven and Chopin and lead them
Bit enraptured. Children will take any-
thing if it is presented in an interest-
ing way,
"Froin the beginning you must real-
ize that you cannot talk down to child-
ren. You have to meet them on their
leve], as equals, just ao inplaying
with them. And another thing is to.
let them help in the music. For in-
stance, 1 have them make insect noises
la certain pieces, and beat nine in
others, anti bum the tunes of $ome of
them. Then, about every ten minutes
1 make them stop and tell them that it
is my turn. And they invariably stop
and are as good as gold.
"Their remarks after the concerts
are always delightful. One little girl
about six„ in a town out West, came
up on the ' platform carrying the
grimiest doll 1 have ever seen, and
said with much dignity: "My dol] en-
joyed your concert very much, Mr.
Maier.' At the same concert a lad of
twelve, one of your super -masculine
beings, said condescendingly that he
had liked"my playing, though of course
he realized that it was for those who
liked that sort of thing best. I find
that it is tbe incorrigibles who ask me
where they can get• the music of
Schubert's Waltzes.
"I had one curious experience in a
boys' school, which shows the coueer-
vative attitude which is taken in some•
Places toward innovations, I was en-:
gaged to give a recital at this school,
and promptly at eight o'clock the boye
were marched into the chapel, a dreary
building with hard wooden benches,
and they, came looking like enartyre.
entering an arena. My first ;pieces
were greeted with perfunctory ap-
plause. Then I decided to start some-
thing, so I played 'Java;' which happen-
ed to be popular then. Faces bright-
ened at onee, so without stopping in
between I went from one populartune
to another, and shouted to the boys to
sing along with me. They were rather
nonpluseecl at first, but finally they all
sang and pounded out the time with
their feet, Meanwhile, the faculty
were sitting with faces stolid with dis-
approval. After about fifteen minutes
of this, I went back to my program and
held the interest of the boys to the
very end. But -eel Not a member of
the faculty came near me after that
concert, and my cheque was handed to
me by a servant."
The Gift.
Earth gets: its price for what Earth
gives us;
The beggaris taxed for a corner to
die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes • and
shrives ue,
We bargain for the :.graves, we lie in;
At the devil's booth are all things sold,
Each ounce of dross ,cpsts its ounce of
gold;
For a cap and bells our lives we
pay,.
Bu.btles we buy with a whole soul's
tasking;
'Tis heaven alone that lis given away,
'Tis .only God may be had for the ask-
ing. —J. R. Lowell.
The Beauty of the Common-
place.
O heart of mine, still let us find
A happiness in little things;
The low sweet whisper of the wind,
The sleepy song the river sings,
The drone of a gold bee behind
A daffodil to which he clings.
O heart of mine, still let us see
The beauty of the oommonplaoe;
Of budding leaf and blossoming tree,
Of haze -hung hills and star sown
space,
For he who loves simplicity
Shall meet his Maker face to face.
—Elizabeth Scollard.
Betrothed as Babies.
For centuries past it has been the
custom in China for the parents of a
baby girl to betroth hPr, in infancy, to
the youthful son of a friendly couple,
and there have been numerous cases
in whioh the girl has not seen her hus-
.band -to -be until she arrived at the
home of his parentsfor the marriage
ceremony. The match was a question
solely for the respective parents. and
the young couple were not consulted.
Western civilization, however, is en-
Crouching on China, and the fact that
the old order is changing is proved by
tour advertisements inserted in the
vernacular Press of Peking recently,
by which young women have given no-
tice to the world that they decline to
recognize the betrothals arranged for
them In their infancies, and that they
reserve -for themselves the right to
select their' life partners..
All Alone.
A young marl took his grandmother
to an art exhibition. They wandered
about looking at the paintings with in-
terest. Finally they stopped before a
portrait which showed a man sitting
in a high-backed chair. Tacked to the
frame was a small white card.
"What does It say en the card?"
asked the old lady.
"A portrait of J. F. Jones, by him-
self," was the reply.
The old lady went closer to the plc-
ture. "What fools these art people
must be!" she muttered. "Anybody
can see Jones• is by himself. There's
nobody else in the picture."
How. Tuberculosis Is Caught.
An easy way to catch tuberculosis is
from some sick person who has been
spitting on the floor or pavement. The
Spit dries like powder and goes into
your lungs and you are apt to catch
the disease if yourare tired or weak.
Have Probably Been Dried.
"Most of the planets have many
"Yee?"
"•Y`cs but astranensere have failed
,to•find moonshine on a singie one,"
Germany Leads In Movies.
Germany has mere ntotioai picture
th'eiatree than any other emtntry of
Earape. . .
Stars We Cannot See.
Two hundred millions of millions of
miles away is a star called Algol. It
isi the second brightest star in the con-
stellation of Perseus, and it has the
tui ieu.s habit of varying in brightness
at regular intervals,.
After much research we know now
that Algol Consist s oaf two stars—osie
bright, the other dark. They are each
about a million miles. in diameter and
about two million miles apart. They
revolve around one another, and when
the dark star is between us and the
bright one, the light we receive from
the latter diminishes. '
There are several other stars of the
Algol type, and it is simply through
our researches that we are aware that
there emist in the heavens dark stars—
stars which give no light at all and
are in themselves totally invisible.
How many there may be we dig not
know, for it is only by their power of
eclipsing bright stars that we can re-
cognize them at all.
•
A Warlike College Yell.
Here is a suggestion from Harper's
Magazine that may be helpful to har-
assed undergraduates who are trying
to compose a new "yell" that shall be
at once inspiring and unintelligible:.
"We've got a dandy college yell,
now."
"What is it?"
"We give font- Russian battleships,
a siss-boom-ah and then two Chinese
generals."
World's Oldest Mine.
The oldest company in the world is
that which owns the Falun . Mine' in,
Sweden. This mine has been worked
for seven hundred years without a
break and has never changed hands.
The company is called the Stora Kop-
parbergs Bergslags Aktiebolag, ' and
there is evidence that it was mining
copper in the year 1225.
In these seven hundred years the
Falun Mine has yielded -over a ton of
gold, fifteen tows of silver, and about
half a million tons of copper.Now it
produces 30,000 tons of iron pyrites
every year. The mine is a huge hale
in the ground; nearly a quarter of a
mile long, half that distance across,
and some two hundred feet deep.
Men dig for iron pyrites a thousand
feet below its, level and there are eigh-
teen miles, of galleries containing near-
ly three thousand separate chambers.:
A deccent into these depths is a
strange and rather terrifying experi-
ence. First the visitor must Boar heavy
black serge overalls. and a wide -brim-
med black hat. He is given an acety
lene torch shaped something like a
kettle.
The visitor makes his way down a
path of ducleboards. The air grows
colder and colder, and at the end of
ten minutes he must walk warily in
ease he slips on the. ice. Tne galleries
are fearsome places with holes eight
hundred feet deep, into which the visi-
tor might fall if it were not for the red
flares, burnt by the guides,
l�:•Y:S4-•Ji,..111..:'rt'L: w"/IY'...`: 14r.r.�. ... .i�
'teas Preached 22,000 Sermons.
Canthi Hay Aitkins, 83 -year-old vicar
of • erwielr •Cathedral, England, has
preached 22,000 sermons. and says he
Is out to preach many more. He be-
gan::preaching at the age of 17, and his
'delightful sermons are well known
both in England and Canada.
es
Gave the Game Away.
The tread of the house had tele-
phas ed that he would bring home a
guest to luncheon—a. guest wham 'his
wife realized he would delight to
honor:
Preparations were made according-
ly, with results satisfactory to her hos-
pitable and housewifely- heart.
Unfortunately, six-year-old Gladys'
came in a trifle Late. Sweeping the
table with an all -embracing glance,
"Ham." she muttered, audibly, as she
climbed into her chair, "is this lunch?"
"Why, of course, it's luncheon,
Gladys," said her mother with a re-
pressive gesture.
But Gladys was not to be stayed.
"Well," she replied, "maybe it is;
but it looks exactly like Sunday din-
ner."
An Undesirable Partner.--
Fish—"You
artner.^.Fish—"You only danced ones
tivith'Mr. Eel at the fish ball."
Mrs. Fish—"Yes, once was enough
---he wriggles so terribly."
�E NEWER COMMERCIAL CANA1RA.
Production of Western Faranns
Natural Resources.
Many • Important
The first twenty years of the pre.
sent century hae witnessed a striking
change' hi the character of Canada,
eommereially and industrially. The
moat important of these is undoubted-
ly the opening up of the wheat lands'
of the prairie provinces, says the Na-
tural Resources Intelligence Service
of the Department of the Interior.
Nearly three centuries were re-
quired to build up the ` magnificent
farming communities sof eastern. Can-
ada, but as late as 1900 hardly more
than the advance guard of agriculture
had crossed the threshold of the west-
ern plains.
Twenty-five years ago neither Sas-
katchewan nor Alberta could muster
a hundred thousand people all told.
Commercially, in their contribution to
the business of the country they were
perhaps equivalent to less than half -a•
dozen of Ontario's forty -odd counties.
To -day their production furnishes the
life -blood to a huge proportion of Cana-)
than enterprise. Western prosperity
has become a barometer for business
throughout the Dominion. The west-
ern wheat crop is of vital concern to
business enterprise from Halifax to
Vancouver. No other item of Cana-
dian production is watched with any-
thing like the degree of national in-
terest that is centred upon the pro-
gress of the crops of the prairies from
the time they are sown until they are
reaped. Governments, railways, finan-
cial institutions, manufacturers and
wholesalers•, business interest of all
kinds, large and small, share directly
or indirectly in the boon of a good har-
vest or in the disappointments of a
meagre one. The eagerness with
which the crop estimates are received
in industrial and commercial centres
of the Dominion is perhaps the most
convincing testimony to the manner in
which •the agricultural west has .shift-
ed the whole outlook of Canadian
business
It is not only in the temporary fluc-
tuations of current business in the dis-
tributing cities of the West itself or in
the industrial and financial centres of
the East or in its effect upon railway
traffic and earnings from coast to
coast that the pulsating power of west-
ern farm output asserts itself as a
chief "prime mover" of Canada's
economic machine. The western farm
wields an influence far beyond the
yearly variations of trade. It is the
constructive force behind the build-
ing up of huge additions to the coun-
try's permanent industrial assets.
Whole communities; divorced entire-
ly from direct farm ,pursuits, owe their
rise or growth largely to the agricul-
tural settlement of the pairies. The
calleries of Alberta have been opened
hardly less than' by the grain -grower
than the miner. Likewise the lumber-
man and fruit rancher of British Co.
•
Exceeds Combined Output
lusnbia, many of the lake shipping corgi
munitiee draw heavily' upon the comp
menial support .•of the .pralrle pro-
vinoes, Scarcely a city of any inne
portance in gastern Canada but •WA
its flour mills built or enlarged to
grind western .grain, its implement,
textile, furniture, leather, rubber or
other .concerns leaning strongly niton
the orders turned 1n by their western
Salesmen.
Summed up In all its ramillea4tions
the settlement of Western Canada can
Justly claim credit for an enormous
'share of the real increase in the pro-
ducing property of Canada in the last
twenty-five years --whether • that in-
crease has taken the form of the West
itself, or of new distributing towns
and cities, of new or enlarged fac-
tories and mills of all kinds in the
East, of great harbor improvements
on the Great Lakes and on the sea-
board, of coal mines in Alberta, .of•'
sawmills in British Columbia or ,af a
thousand and one other enterprises.
Take another method of appraising
the effects of the opening of the west.'
Lumbering has long been a great in-
dustry in the magnificent forests of
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec,
Ontario and British Columbia. Mining,
from Cape Breton to the Yukon, pro-
duces a large and steadily mounting
annual return. The renowned fisher-
ies of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts
and of : 'umerabie inland waters em-
ploy tens of thousands of people and
support a far-flung trade. But it gives
some conception of the change that
has been wrought in the caminercial
character of the Dominion to realize
that the total annual product of these
great industries with their centuries
of solid development --all of the lum-
ber cut in the whole of Canada in a
year, plus all of the fish landed and
marketed, plus again all the gold, sil-
ver, coal, copper, nickel and other
wealth produced from Canadian mines
-mall of these lumped together do not
equal the farm output produced each
year in the Prairie Provinces which,
twenty or twenty-five years ago, were
hardly on a par, commercially, with a,
half dozen Ontario counties.
Thus, in considerably less than one
generation, there has been injected in-
to the economic life of the Dominion a
huge producing and oansuming area,
so big that the Canada of 1900 pre.
sents few features at all comparable'
with it.
This Agricultural Empire of the
West may safely be put down as the
most salient feature of the newer com-
mercial Canada.
Dogs of War.
At the time of the armistioe there
were about 10,000 dogs with the
armies of all sides.
British Empire in Miniature to be Seen at Lodon Exposition
Huge Exhibition Will Open on
April 23 and Is To Be Most
Elaborate of Its Kind Ever
Offered Public.
You look down upon towers and
minarets and landscape gardens,
domes and high roofs and stately
walls, palaces and courts and lifter
bridges, with here the slender outline
of the Taj Mahal at Agra, here the
squat shape of a West African fort,
there a glimpse of a Chinese street in
Kangkong, there, again, an English art
gallery.
This is Wembley, a name put on the
Map of England and of the world by
the British Empire Exhibition, to• be
staged here from April 23—"the Bri-
tish Empire seen as through a shop
window," in the expressive phrase of
the Prince of Wales. The viewpoint
is the terrace of the stadium, the
largest sports arena in the world, one
and a half times the size of the Roman
Collosserun, covering an area of over
ten acres and accommodating 125,000
spectators.
Everything scales to this at Wemb-
ley. Never before has an exhibition
on such vast lines been planned. The.
British Empire Exhibition will be the
largest thing of its kind the world has
ever seen. Its grounds, laid out in
what was one of the most beautiful
parks ,af greater London and arranged
with the idea of preserving so far as
possible the best of the magnificent
old trees, cover an area of some 240
acres. Fifty million dollars has been
spent on the making of the conarete'
and steel city at Wembley which re-
produces the whole of the British Em-
pire in miniature.
"Around the world for eighteen-
pence"—the price of admission—is the
slogan of the promoters of the exhibi-
tion, the profits of which, to be shared
with the dominions and colonies, will
be devoted to public purposes. It is a
large claim,- but it is justified. The
British Empire covers a fourth of the
estimated area of the inhabited earth,
and almost every part of It will be re-
presented at Wembley,
interest _Shown by .Do►ninions.
The amount of space which the Do-
minion Governments aro occupying is
altogether 'unprecedented, The area..
covered by the exhibits of 'several of
them actually is 85 large as that which
the British government itself has been
accustomed to take is great interna-
tional exhibitions. Canada cad Aus-
tr'alia each has spent $1,250,000 on,
bulldiug alone.
The exhibit of the British govern-
ment will, in one sense, provide a con-
trast to the oth.er pavilions inthe ex-
hibition. While the latter are for the
most part devoted to some special ter-
ritory or some special industry or
group of industries, this government's
exhibit will be mare general in scope.
Its aim will be to illustrate the func-
tions of the home gevernment as a
whole, but with special reference to
the empire, and to show something of
what the responsibilities of the home
government are in regard to empire
defensse, communications, settlement
and .economic development.
Around a large court of honor, in the
middle of the British Government
Building, run galleries, accommodat-
ing the exhibits of a large number of
government departments and semi-of-
ficial bodies whose functions have a
direct bearing on the welfare of the
home country and the empire. On an-
other floor, lit entirely by artificial
light, is a collection of models and
other devices notable chiefly for their
originality and ingenuity. A special
feature is a large scale relief map of
the world, measuring 40 feet by 20
feet and set in water, through which
model ships will run along the main
ocean routes connecting various parts
of the empire.
At the far end of tbe building will
be a theatre, but with a large tank of
water instead of a stage. Here will
be presented various spectacles, such
as the Spanish Armada, the Battle of
Trafalgar and the Raid an Zeebrugge.
The naval episodes will be under the
direction of the Admiralty, and the Air
Ministry also is preparing to stage a
scene of an air bombardment sof Lon-
don. The army will rely mainly on
scenic mod•ele•, three of which will il-
lustrate the defense of the Ypres
salient, the capture of the Messines
Ridge and the Battle of the Somme.
' Government Gives Best.'
A. mere catalogue of the various
bodies, official and semi-oiiieiai, each
as the Postoflice, the Mint, the Ord-
nance Survey, the Tropical Health
Committee and so on, would not do
muoh to enlighten prospective visitors
as to the scope Of the British govern-
ment's exhibits, Evety branch of the
government's activity will bo repre-
sented, and In no case 'have imaging.
tion and thought been spared to make
the exhibits attractive and stimulate
interest in them. The Ministry of
Health, for example, exhibits two
Models; one of which repsesents a
modern industrial town just as it balls
BY WARRE B. WELLS
evolved, without plan or method, the
streets at all angles and the buildings
jumbled together haphazard. The
other shows a town built upon the
same site, ideally planed, with wide
open spaces and ready access to all
the chief centres.
Aside from the government pavilion,
Great Britain will be represented at
Wembley principally in two colossal
buildings—the Palace of Engineering
and the Palace of Industry. Jointly,
these two buildings cover more than
twenty-five acres of ground, or twelve
times the size of Trafalgar Square. In
the Palace of Engineering, probably
the largest concrete building in the
world, will be housed the most ambiti-
ous practical effort that has ever been
made to acquaint the world with the
achievements and possibilities of the
great key industries of Great Britain.
The section, representing more than
three hundred of the leading engineer-
ing and shipbuilding firms, will con-
tain the finest collection of engineer-
ing plant, machinery and materials
ever assembled in one exhibition. The
exhibits will range from some weigh-
ing 150 tons each down to the most
delicate testing instruments that have
ever been made.
A Complete Coal Mine.
Close by a full-sized colliery, com-
plete with massiee headgear, pit
ponies, washeries and all the up-to-
date paraphernalia of coal mining can
be seen in actual operation. This is
being organized by the Mining As-
sociation of Great Britain in •conjunc-
tion with the Institute of Mining En-
gneers and the Mners' Federation of
Great Britain. Visitors will be lower-
ed in a two -decked cage to the shaft
bottom, and will step out into actual
underground workings, where they
will have an opportunity of witnessing
the whole process of winning and trans -
parting the coal out of the workings
to the pithead.
The art of the Empire will be repre-
sented in the Palace of Arts, which
will house a notable collection of pic-
tures and sculpture, drawn not only
from the United Kingdom but from all
the overseas dominions, to whom a
separate range of galleries in the
r t. $
CAN'T,
NtC No se GA6e0 "r M
wh..1.tE DUGAN-,
N15 rA`MER
oWN6 A D°U-
SScRE-
�-
4.4
.tt,
1'
r
•
• wd
irf�"li•
r,, cr�-� „� -..:h•
e
Kms.
V t'•
q'
Many Acres Occupied by
Wembley Site of Display
Which Will Dazzle Many
Millions of All Nations.
building has been allotted. Ecclesias-
tical art finds an appropriate setting
in a lofty basilica. Two galleries will
be devoted to the art of the theatre,
where evil be shown a series of model
sets illustrating the development of
stagecraft from its earliest beginnings
to the advanced ideas of to -day. The
miniature splendors of the Queen's
Dolls' House here will first be open to
public view in a gallery specially built
for the purpose.
Colonial Exhibits.
The Canadian and Australian pa-
viliono face the Palaoes of Engineer-
ing and Industries, across the lake
which divides the .exhibition, with the
pavilion at the Indian Empire at one •
end. This latter pavilion reproduces
the artistic beauties of the Taj Mahal
at Agra and the Jame Masjid at Delhi.
The South African pavilion is built
in the old Dutch style with character-
istic steep and loggia. The Burma
section, which adjoins the Indian
grounds, contains a pavilion designed
an lines of purely Burmese architec-
ture and decorated by some of the
finest carvings in the exhibition.
Similarly, the towers flanking the
Ceylon pavilion, in the Kandyan style,
are modeled on the famous "Temple
of the Tooth" at Kandy. The Hong-
kong section reproduces a native
street in which many Chinese will be
seen at work in their normal surround,
lugs. The Palestine and Cyprus pa-
vilion is designed in the style of the
Eastern Mediterranean, The West,
African section takes the form of a
walled city and is an exact replica of
a typical city in the hinterland of 'Weal
Africa.. Similarly, the East .Mricar]
Building is a copy of an actual Arab
palace, the entrance door o.f which is
a replica, of one of the beautiful old
carved doorways to be seen in Zanzi-
bar, The West Indian and Atlantic
group occupies a pavilion built in the
Georgian Colonial style, surrounded by,
a tropleal garden, In which ie a, model
of the famous lake of pitch bear Trine
dad:
Adjacent to the exhibition itself will
be the largest esriuseinetrt park in the
world, a feature d which is an exact
replica of the tenth of 'hut -ankh -amen
at Luxor, into which visitors may des -
deed. This is being staged under the
direction of one of the roost distirr-
gulslied 'hlgyptologiats of 'lie deay.
•
4