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there by the train. It is a last year's bird's nest. The nest is there;
the birds are flown, the birds of youth, and noisy health, and ravenous
appetite, and inexperience. You cannot go "Back Home" by train, but
here is the magic wishing-carpet, and here is your transportation in
your hand all made out to you. You and I will make the journey
together. Let us in heart and mind thither ascend.

I went to the Old Red School-house with you. Don't you remember me?
I was learning to swim when you could go clear across the river
without once "letting down." I saw you at the County Fair, and bought
a slab of ice-cream candy just before you did. I was in the infant-class
in Sabbath-school when you spoke in the dialogue at the monthly
concert. Look again. Don't you remember me? I used to stub my toe so;
you ought to recollect me by that. I know plenty of people that you
know. I may not always get their names just right, but then it's been a
good while ago. You Il recognize them, though; you'll know them in a
minute.
EUGENE WOOD.

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THE OLD RED SCHOOL-HOUSE
Oh, the little old red school-house on the hill, (2d bass: On the hill.) Oh,
the little old red school-house on the hill, (2d bass: On the hi-hi-hi-yull)
And my heart with joy o'erflows, Like the dew-drop in the rose,*
Thinking of the old red SCHOOL-HOUSE I o-o-on the hill, (2d tenor
and 1st bass: The hill, the hill.)
THE MALE QUARTET'S COMPENDIUM.
* I call your attention to the chaste beauty of this line, and the
imperative necessity of the chord of the diminished seventh for the
word "rose." Also "school-house" in the last line must be very loud and
staccato. Snap it off.

If the audience will kindly come forward and occupy the vacant seats in
the front of the hall, the entertainment will now begin. The male quartet
will first render an appropriate selection and then . . . . Can't you see
them from where you are? Let me assist you in the visualization.

The first tenor, the gentleman on the extreme left, is a stocky little man,
with a large chest and short legs conspicuously curving inward. He has
plenty of white teeth, ash-blonde hair, and goes smooth-shaven for
purely personal reasons. His round, dough-colored face will never look
older (from a distance) than it did when he was nine. The flight of years
adds only deeper creases in the multitude of fine wrinkles, and
increasing difficulty in hoisting his tiny, patent-leather foot up on his
plump knee.
The second tenor leans toward him in a way to make another man
anxious about his watch, but the second tenor is as honest as the day.
He is only "blending the voices." He works in the bank. He is going to
be married in June sometime. Don't look around right away, but she's
the one in the pink shirt-waist, the second one from the aisle, the one . . .
two . . . three . . . the sixth row back. See her? Say, they've got it bad,
those two. What d' ye think? She goes down by the bank every day at
noon, so as to walk up with him to luncheon. She lives across the street,
and as soon as ever she has finished her luncheon, there she is, out on
the front porch hallooing: "Oo-hoo!" How about that? And if he so
much as looks at another girl - m-M!
The first bass is one of these fellows with a flutter in his voice. No, I
don't mean a vibrato. It's a flutter, like a goat's tail. It is considered real
operatic.
The second bass has a great, big Adam's apple that slides up and down
his throat like a toy-monkey on a stick. He is tall, and has eyebrows
like clothes-brushes, and he scowls fit to make you run and hide under
the bed. He is really a good-hearted fellow, though. Pity he has the
dyspepsia so bad. Oh, my, yes! Suffers everything with it, poor man.
He generally sings that song about "Drink-ing! DRINK-ang!
Drink-awng!" though he's strictly temperate himself. When he takes
that last low note, you hold on to your chair for fear you'll fall in too.
But why bring in the male quartet?
Because "The Little Old Red School-house" is more than a mere
collocation of words, accurately descriptive. It is what Mat King would

call a "symblem," and as such requires the music's dying fall to lull and
enervate a too meticulous and stringent tendency to recollect that it
wasn't little, or old, or red, or on a hill. It might have been big