rectly, the beaver has hastened to an amazing degree the settlement and the development of the United States of America.

Much American history and stirring and poetic parts of our literature have beaver land for a setting. Beaver trappers inspired Jefferson. Then followed Bonneville, Astoria, James Bridger, Kit Carson, the American Fur Company, voyageurs, free trappers, Oregon and Washington, and finally Fifty-four-Forty or Fight.

For two hundred years the rigid and romantic Hudson's Bay Company was Canada, and beaver was the life of Hudson Bay. Horace T. Martin says that beavers figured in the settlement and the development of Canada and that the beaver "has been associated with the industrial and commercial development, and indirectly with the social life, the romance, and, to a considerable extent, with the wars of the country."

The numbers and the continental extent of the beaver, and especially the value of his skin, gave him numerous places in the nomenclature of the land. Dozens of towns, streams, and lakes are named for the beaver. Canadians honored him and themselves by making him their national emblematic animal. And he is on the State seal of Wisconsin.

At times he has dominated our wearing apparel-our fashions. Beaver robes and coats were pioneer comforts. And it was our fur-bearing friend and cooperator who contributed to the creation and for a time to the existence of that kingly headpiece, that autocratic presence, the stovepipe hat.

Beavers have legal protection, mostly by a closed season, in a majority of the States in the Union. In 1877 Missouri led off with legislation protecting these animals, and Maine followed in 1885. In most cases the legislators recognized that in some localities the beavers might be destructive and intolerable. To meet cases of this kind people whose prop: erty was damaged by beavers could obtain permission from the State Conservation Commission, or some other State authority, to trap or kill the beavers do

ing the damage. The skins of those killed became the property of the State. The legislators were wise enough to realize that there should be no blanket legislation which would allow State-wide killing.

Beavers were the original conservat'onists of natural resources. They have lost most of their holdings, but not their place in the scheme of things. In numerous localities live beavers are more economically valuable to us than dead ones.

For a quarter of a century I have eulogized the beaver, and I still defend him. But the bald fact now is that he cannot be allowed to possess numerous localities once possessed by him without crowding out the present human popula tion of these localities. But there are thousands of localities in our land in which beavers would still be of economic, educational, and even higher value to us.

In numerous hill, mountain, and other districts beavers may still serve us well. Their reservoirs can still de

posit soil, check damaging floods, and make streams more valuable through equalized, reliable flow.

A beaver pond and its wild-flower border is useful and beautiful. A beaver house is the permanent home of primitive home-loving folk. Beaver works add beauty and charm to county, State, and National parks. People are made in their leisure hours, and beaver works will contribute suggestion-thoughtsmuch that is restful and inspiring, to the leisure hours of visitors. Perhaps the strangest contribution of the beaver to our thought material is the fact that his play period each year commonly is about sevenfold that of his work period. To work like a beaver does not mean dull slaving. Working like a beaver really means efficient work-play, plan, and achievement.

A visit to an inhabited beaver colony arouses and enriches the imagination. No nation rich in individual imagination has ever fallen. Beaver works intensify the lure and the spell of the wilder

ness.

T

HE coal question is of vital interest. It touches all of us, both poor and rich Without coal there would be few industries. Take coal away, and we might freeze in winter. The miners' quarrel with the British mine-owners has affected the world-Britain directly, and this country at least indirectly. By some means, either forcible or peaceful, the mining problem must be solved, and soon, or the whole world may be involved in dreadful turmoil.

The question is bound up with wider issues, concerning capital and labor and

entire communities. The miners and the men who own the mines were not the only factors in the conflicts which before and after the late war caused such commotion "over there" and here. All parties to the quarrel have their rights, their wrongs, their troubles, and their special harrying problems. And, though at times one might suppose the contrary, the public, above all, needs help and sympathy. The public has too long been made the victim of cynical combinations, labor unions, and strange laws. It has been forced to look on and to hold its hands while matters vital to

its life and health were settled quite regardless of its wishes. The price of coal has been put up or down to suit two hostile groups. Enormous profits have been grabbed by mine-owners. Outrageous wages have been paid to miners.

We read of dividends which stagger by their iniquity, of wages which to most seem the reverse of just. The price of coal at the pit's mouth is not prohibitive. But from the pit's mouth to the bin is a long way. Between them stand the middlemen and railways, the transport workers of all kinds, the c peddlers. Before we have a char

warm ourselves we have to bear the costs resulting from those factors.

The public has been kicked and fleeced so long that it has almost lost the heart to enter protests. Here and abroad, and chiefly in Great Britain, labor in general has organized to terrorize it. The strike (miscalled the lockout) of the miners in Great Britain was followed by the threat of two allied groups-first the railway men, and next the transport workers-to tie up trade, to ruin private property, to make all social order a vain word. And still the public as a mass has not done much (though it has done a little) to reform conditions which it has neither brought about nor willed to be.

Yet if it only willed it might accomplish much to save itself from being crushed and wronged between the upper millstone of the mine-owners and the big nether millstone of the fighting miners. Few men are able, fewer still would like, to take to mining. The job requires long training and endurance, a willingness to bear distressing hardships. But of the millions of the unemployed abroad and in this country some would prefer a collier's life to misery. And, with intelligence, the stronger part of these might help to work the mines in an emergency.

Without the active backing of the rail and transport unions, the miners would, in any case, soon have to compromise. By freezing others they would harm themselves. For they, like all the rest, must work or die.

No one could wish the miners less than justice. Few really have much love for the mine-owners. The public has, however, a deep interest in its own dire needs. It cannot see why it should freeze or starve or bear extortions.

Strikes of the kind planned by the Triple Alliance in Great Britain spell more, much more, than strikes. They spell real war-war waged by an organized minority upon a helpless and unorganized majority. It was polite, of course, and tactful of Lloyd George to choose "misunderstanding" as a substitute for "conflict" at that conference of the hostile mine-owners and miners. But what he meant was "war"-just social war. He proved it when he not only called out the reserves but also asked for volunteers.

The fate of general strikes depends on the response the public makes to such appeals. If there are volunteers enough to step into the breach left by the miners, railroaders, and transport men, such strikes will fail. If not, there is no telling what may happen.

Among the first to realize these very simple truths there was a small group of well-meaning men and women, without capital or experience, who at a meeting in New York three years ago laid the foundations of the so-called People's League. The purpose of the League was so to organize the public as to enable it to fight all class oppression. Unhaply, the founders lacked resources,

They are still hoping against hope for public help.

Meanwhile, in England an abortive People's League, with similar aims and a more fortunate organization, named the Middle Classes' Union, had been attempting to oppose the double tyranny of organized capital and labor. From time to time the latter of these leagues, or unions, has lent its influence and members to resist the over-dominant labor folk. Its efforts, like those of the New York People's League, have been discouraged by the middle classes' apathy. Internal wrangles over rules and persons have sadly checked its usefulness. Yet it has shown the public how it might be helped out of its quagmire of despond if only it would learn to help itself.

And the example of the New York People's League was not quite wasted. In an industrial crisis some two years ago a wealthy group or combination planned and formed another league of citizens to fight a transport strike. Since then we have heard little of this body. It may have been dissolved. It may still live. In an emergency it would, maybe, take shape again. And that emergency may come at any moment.

For one of the great facts of these hard times is the new solidarity of labor the world over. It calls for constant, temperate, careful, active vigilance as surely as the restless greed of capital.

A senseless lockout or a ruthless labor strike may deal a sudden blow at order in this country. We should stand ready, if need be, to keep the most essential wheels of life in motion. We must have light and gas and oil, food and means of transport. We must have railways and we must have coal and water.

The French, whom many sneer at as unpractical, have understood this better than ourselves. They have within the past few years had labor upsets of a very serious kind. Yet nowhere are the radicals of labor now less dangerous than in France.

For this the French may thank, to some extent, the common sense-the plain bon sens-of their own peasants. But they owe something-a great dealto a well-ordered and efficient league of citizens known as the Union Civique, or Civic Union.

I had an opportunity last year to visit the leaders of this new organization, which, though it studiously avoids selfadvertising and works very quietly, can at a pinch be counted on as an important aid of order. The president of the French Civic Union is a distinguished general, retired. The effective head, and incidentally the secretary, of the Union, M. Bienaymé de la Motte, has on his cards the words "Ex-Chef de Bataillon." During the war he was connected with the Conseil Supérieur de Guerre and served as Commandant at Interallied Headquarters. He has had dealings both with Haig and Pershing. And,

though a man of charming modesty and tact, he stands for discipline.

In an illuminating talk with me last summer he outlined the chief objects of the Union, explained the methods which enabled it to carry on its useful work, and foreshadowed its establishment in the near future on a permanent basis. The funds it needs are raised by small subscriptions, ranging from two francs (the low fee for nominal membership) to five hundred francs. Subscriptions are divided into various categories, with rights and privileges which are also various. The central office in Paris (in what forty years ago was the St. Sulpice Seminary) is in close touch with ninety or more local branches. The total membership last year was rather small. The Union numbered hardly a full hundred thousand. But it was growing, gathering in recruits each day, and it was in its infancy. It had behind it, but not ostentatiously, the moral and, I think, material power of the French Government. Its chief activities were bent on the formation of a civic force which could at any time take up the tasks of striking servants of the general public and of rebellious Government employees. Recruits were chosen with the greatest care and not retained till they had proved their earnestness. Exsoldiers, mill-hands, motormen, mechanics, cab-drivers, men and women able to take charge of telephones and telegraphic jobs, of course were welcome. But not unless they brought with them convincing evidence that they were honest and to be depended on.

Besides these more or less efficient members, the Union was last year enrolling, patiently and unobtrusively, thousands on thousands of as yet untrained and unskilled members, who were paid salaries while they went through their apprenticeships for public service.

The Union, I should add, was neither partisan nor anti-laborite. It had been formed for the one clear and proper purpose of protecting social order. Last spring, when the then mighty C. G. T. (the Confédération Générale du Travail, i. e., the General Federation of Labor) tried to disrupt things as the British Triple Alliance may some day, it was half-fledged. And none the less at the first chance it got, with little fussing and no loss of life, it proved itself so capable that it prevented a grave breakdown of the service on the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Railways.

No doubt, if it were called upon again, the Union Civique would be equal to the need. It would be able to keep the French cities lighted and supplied with water, to organize some sort of transportation in most places, and to assure, to some extent at all events, the working of the telephones, the posts, and telegraphs.

Such leagues do not, perhaps, solve the great problem of the relationship of class groups and the public; but they do show how much may be accomplished in emergencies such as menace us. What has been done abroad we might do here.

Y

BUFFALO

BY THE MAYOR

EAR after year Buffalo wallowed in the mire of municipal corruption and inefficiency until about 1909 a group of public-spirited citizens organized themselves for the purpose of studying the problem of city government with the end in view of trying to bring about better conditions. Speakers were brought from all over the country. Various charters were studied and the decision was finally reached to try to secure a commission form of government for Buffalo. This is a term somewhat misleading to the uninitiated, because a commission is usually an appointed board far removed from popular control. Commission government in a municipality is just the opposite of this. It is government by a small council, elected at large and wholly subject to popular control.

A commission charter for Buffalo was introduced in the Legislature. It was a daring experiment because of the large size of the city. The Legislature was most reluctant to grant it. The regular politicians did not want it, but the situation was critical. The city had reached the limit of its borrowing power. So far as going ahead with municipal improvements was concerned Buffalo was bankrupt. The old party organizations had nothing to offer to meet and deal with the crisis. The expedient of turning out one political party after the other had been tried and found useless. Efforts to elect an independent ticket had proved of no avail. At the hearing before the Cities Committee of the Legislature citizens from all walks in life appeared in such numbers that the Senate Chamber was filled to overflowing. It was one of the most remarkable scenes which Albany had ever witnessed, for they had paid their own way on a journey of six hundred miles.

During the closing hours of that session a great mass-meeting was held in Buffalo from which by special wire messages were flashed to Albany, and under the lash of this dramatic procedure the Legislature very grudgingly passed a bill permitting the people of Buffalo to vote on the adoption of the commission charter. At the polls the proposal was carried two to one.

The new government took hold on the

GEORGE S.

INSISTS

OF BUFFALO
BUCK

first day of January, 1916. It had to contend with the freakish financial phenomena engendered by the war, with continual restlessness among its employees from this cause, and with a cosmopolitan population representing in racial origin both allies and enemies. By the first of January, 1921, the new government had to its credit a better system of assessments, a policy rigorously pursued of paying off old debts instead of refunding them, with the result that the credit of the city in the money markets of the world was surpassed by no municipality; it had a borrowing capacity of $40,000,000 as against nothing five years earlier; the Police Department had been so conducted that the city was freer from vice than ever before in its history; the Fire Department's efficiency had been increased and the number of employees and fire-houses reduced; while the recreational facilities of the city and its hospitals and services to the needier portion of the population had been greatly extended. Problems which the old government had wrestled with for a long time and in which it made no progress, such as creating a turning basin in the harbor, reached a speedy solution under the new régime. All this was accomplished with an average rise of only fifty-three per cent in the cost of government, a figure below the operating increase of every kind of private business during the same period.

Under the old Charter, if a citizen were interested in some matter requiring action by the municipality, it was necessary for him to appear first before a committee of the Board of Aldermen. then before the Board of Aldermen as a whole; next before a committee of the Board of Councilmen, then before the Board of Councilmen as a whole; and, finally, before the Mayor. No matter how much of a demonstration the citizens might make before a committee of the Board of Aldermen, when the committee went into executive session the alderman of the ward most concerned was first consulted, and it mattered little how much the rest of the city might wish certain action, if the alderman from that ward was opposed the committee sustained his opposition. It w

hard for the citizens to be effective, and the number of times it was necessary for them to appear discouraged participation in public matters. Now the Council holds a town meeting every Friday afternoon. Its members are present, sitting as a committee of five, to which all matters requiring hearings are referred. The citizen needs to appear only once. The entire city government is present, because the Commissioners are heads of all the various city departments. The log-rolling between members of a large Board of Aldermen is no more. Instead, the five Councilmen elected from the entire city have a vision of the needs of the city as a whole. They are as sensitive to the views of people from the water-front as they are to those from the most prosperous residential sections. There is no delay in the settlement of any matter before the Council, so that a business man may quickly determine just where he stands. The people have gradually come to realize that their presence in the Council Chamber counts. The result is that they are coming in greate and greater numbers to the Council hearings and there are many more meeting with the city Commissioners each Friday afternoon than was ever the case with the committees of the former boards which had charge of the city's affairs. It has been a very easy matter to fix responsibility for mistakes or to get action. This is a striking contrast to the days when the best of intentions were lost in the labyrinth of boards, commissions, and legislative and executive officials.

One of the principles of the new Charter which it was framed to render easy of accomplishment was that any man who was doing his duty should be left undisturbed, no matter what his politics might be. This principle has been carried out, and there has been no scandal involving graft or corruption or thievery of any kind. Under aldermanic rule, whenever there was a municipal election there were certain voting precincts in the city in which it was necessary to employ as high as fifteen patrolmen to preserve order. Since the new Charter has gone into operation one patrolman to each precinct has been detailed only as a precaution. Plainly, nothing has been at stake making it worth while to buy or bulldoze or slug the voters.

Now this course of events was not at all pleasant to active politicians. Buffalo's Charter was planned to loosen the grip of machine politics upon city government, and it was working out just as it was expected to do. There were other elements which had reasons for dissatisfaction. There were some people who sincerely believed in party government. There were those who would like to profit by the permission to violate State and local laws in a way which they could not do under the direct responsibility placed upon the Mayor. There were those who preferred a corrupt board of aldermen but dared not openly advocate it. And then there

was that element which always exists at all times and which is dissatisfied with whatever régime is in control.

Into this situation was projected on the first of January, 1920, a Councilman who for many years had been a chronic agitator. The public decided to give him a chance. He recognized no responsibility as an administrator in the affairs of half a million interdependent people, but continued to use his position as a platform for the advocacy of the most extreme and radical ideas. With out the slightest sense of dignity or courtesy, he gave way to the use of violent and abusive language, which at times goaded some of his colleagues beyond endurance.

A spirit of protest arose among the thinking people of the community. The politicians thought they saw an opportunity to overthrow the Commission Charter by capitalizing the dissatisfaction with the scenes enacted in the Council Chamber. A bill was introduced in the New York Legislature, late in the session of 1921, purporting to amend the Charter of the City of Buffalo. In reality, it was its uprooting. It proposed to turn over to a board of nine $2,500-a-year aldermen plus a Mayor and a Comptroller elected at large all the power and duties involved in administering the affairs of the great city of Buffalo. It was an absurd proposal. The authorship of the bill was never revealed. The Hon. George H. Rowe, its introducer in the Assembly, is a mere stripling in years and experience, and yet it received the almost unanimous support of the members of both houses. What Buffalo's most public-spirited citizens accomplished only after years of effort and by storming Albany en masse this youth achieved with ease. The sponsor for the bill in the upper house, Senator Gibbs, stated that both party organizations wanted it, and the solidity of the vote in its favor is conclusive evidence that he spoke the truth. Under the law of New York State, the bill could not go to the Governor if disapproved by the Mayor, unless repassed by the Legislature, as it was a local bill affecting the municipality. The bill provided that a special election be held on May 31 to decide whether the proposed Charter should be adopted. Under New York legislative procedure, the Governor might not have approved the bill until May 15, only sixteen days before the referendum. At any rate, the time would have been too short to organize an effective campaign against the serried ranks of the two great party machines. It was an attempted application in politics of the German war plan, that a disciplined force by quick action might crush a greater, unorganized, potential force.

When it became apparent that a serious effort was to be made to destroy the commission government of the city of Buffalo, citizens who had taken no interest in public affairs for years began to bestir themselves. The old Commission Charter Association, which had

framed and put through Buffalo's Charter, revived. It rented quarters and began the work of gathering data, raising money, and enlisting speakers to conduct a campaign in behalf of the Charter. Citizens who before had grumbled at the conduct of certain of the Councilmen began to count their blessings under the present method of transacting the city's business as compared with the way in which it used to be done, and it was not long before the tide of public opinion was steadily rising in favor of the Commission Charter.

The Mayor announced a hearing on the bill before making his decision. This hearing was held on a Saturday afternoon at the City Hall. Never before was the Council Chamber crowded with citizens representing every walk of life. The opposition to the Rowe Bill was led by the President of the Commission Charter Association, Dr. F. Park Lewis, a distinguished physician. The whole afternoon speaker after speaker voiced abhorrence of the idea of returning to the old aldermanic régime. There were delegates present from all kinds of organizations-from business men's associations, from women's clubs, from social bodies. Union labor came forward as a unit. in support of the present type of city government. By careful count the membership represented at this hearing totaled over one hundred thousand persons.

Although the meeting was well advertised and the Council Chamber was crowded to the doors, there were only seven persons who appeared in favor of the Rowe Bill, and two of these seven were the members of the Assembly and Senate who were responsible for its introduction. All through that long afternoon until well after six in the evening men and women stood in the Council Chamber in order to listen to the proceedings and to take part in them.

The Mayor disapproved the bill in a message which had for its background the popular experience and attitude which this article has attempted to picture. He concluded with a summary which ran as follows:

"I am unwilling to impose upon the public the burden of expense in time and money involved in a special election to determine what is obvious.

"I am unwilling that this city of half a million people shall go back to the control of a bi-partisan political machine.

"I am unwilling that over eight million dollars of taxpayers' money on deposit, with forty million dollars additional borrowing power, all accumulated during the years of Commission rule, shall be dissipated by a form of government discredited by experience and condemned by every student of economics.

"This bill forces an issue neither sought nor welcomed by our citizens, and clearly not needed by the city."

Senator Gibbs announced that in view of the Mayor's veto he would not press the bill for repassage. This spelled its death, and once again Buffalo's public opinion had triumphed over an unwilling Legislature.

A

FIRTIDE BOOKPLATE

FTER years of restless wanderings to and fro, from Broadway to the Bronx and from Herald Square to Harlem, I am free to be my own landlord in my declining years. I have purchased a home of my own.

My little farm, which I have called "Firtide," is about thirty acres in extent and stretches from a sunny river road down to the banks of the Piscatauqua, which it borders for a thousand feet or more. There is a tide-water inlet on one side of the place and a clam cove cuddling the other boundary, so that the far-flung vista to the west, over river and bay, promises to be an admirable hide-away spot where I can retire and compose my opus magnus.

The rocky bluffs, sloping meadows, and irregular shore line, all topped by tangled birch and thick clumps of lofty white pine forest, suggest a rambling old estate by nature picturesque, and, although small for a country place, it seems, to my untutored eye, accustomed to hotel rooms or wedged-in apartments, a vast and incalculable expanse of property.

Why, Firtide is as large as the whole theatrical district of Manhattan. I mean to say that if I put my house on the high bluff where the Times Building now stands Clam Cove would be Columbus Circle. And, by the same token, if River Road were Broadway, my shore line would be Eleventh Avenue, bejabbers!

It is bewildering to sit down in this rush of modern civilization, with its changing geography and laws and income taxes, and soberly prepare to hew out of a thirty-acre patch of abandoned wilderness a home for posterity, even as my forefathers did.

There is a curious thrill to one like myself, a musical director, whose life has been spent in the orchestra pits of Broadway productions, at the thought of clearing a bit of land for a potato patch, or planting a tree that may afford shady trysts or gracious fruits years hence for those whom I may

never see.

I can hardly hope that by sweat of brow and sturdy brawn the swing of my ax will ever alter the scenery of Firtide. Nor do I wish it. I have seen scenery enough in my time. I will much prefer to let the old winding, overgrown

road that leads through the firs to my newly acquired tumble-down house on the bluffs go winding still, and, if I miss the traffic rushing up and down the Great White Way, I'll sit, Gulliverfashion, beside the outlet to my inlet when the tide pours in and out and listen to my own Niagara Falls.

I might even harness this five-foot ebb and flow and, in time, develop power sufficient to saw my cord-wood, for I rather mistrust my first introduction to the ax. But I feel sure that I will be able to set out a young orchard, and on this point alone I am speculating with keen interest. Will these trees meet the appetites of the yet unborn?

In the nursery school of bottle or breast they have their own imperious say, and who can presage what their taste will be? Will they prefer apple, peach, or grape? It is a curious question as to whether the coming century will bring to Firtide another tea party or another amendment.

Of food there is a natural plenty. In the rapidly flowing Piscataqua there is abundance of fish, and Clam Cove fairly bristles with succulent bivalves. Back of the old house there are some ancient apple and cherry trees, still bearing bravely, according to their blankets of blossoms this spring. Along the river road and over my pasture are two or three acres of wild raspberries, and on the southern hill above Clam Cove I found a carpet of wild strawberries.

On second thought, it will still be well to plant some vegetables, for I have just read from a quaint little book that the Indians who formerly overran this section of the country invariably took sick on too much sea food, and until the regular season of wild fowl and venison came in they usually sulked in cave and tepee.

The little book to which I refer is a quaint miscellany of how some of the ancestors of my new neighbors came to be. It appears that these early settlers of York County, Maine, were for the most part dissenters, and many of them claimed kinship with the Puritans. According to the weather-beaten tome, fierce Indian battles were won and lost across the wooded bluffs of Firtide, and it would not surprise me in the least to turn up a skull or two when I begin to grub around my fruit trees or coax the

peaceful radish from its twenty-day sleep.

Hard upon the heels of this interesting information I find that some of my dead-and-gone neighbors were substantial slave-owners, and I am chiefly worried lest one or two of them may not have been buccaneers. There is an admirable stony point on the shore of my farm which hugs Clam Cove and around which the waves lash at high tide that might well have been a nocturnal rendezvous for some lesser Kidd or Morgan. However, I would not go so far as to dig under the brow of the hill for Spanish doubloons or pieces of eight.

As a matter of fact, on my first flying visit to the farm I was sure I heard the clanking of a gibbet chain, only to find, upon investigation, that the discord was but the groaning of some piles which support the ancient bridge over the inlet as the incoming tide lapped them back and forth in a barnacled embrace.

Much to my amazement and dismay, I also read of how the first owner of my two-hundred-year-old house on the bluff was struck by lightning and found dead standing up in the doorway! He had stepped to the door, it appears, with a wash-basin in his hands to collect rain water when the crash came. The case of his huge silver watch was entirely melted away by the thunderbolt, but the works were uninjured. Whether the timepiece was found still ticking, or not, the chronicle does not say.

I wonder if I will see him on the first blustering thunder night I take possession. What with Indian graves, a pirate or two, and some dead men who stand up in doorways, I am likely to have some astral visitors to contest my claims, but, like Washington Irving's Bold Dragoon, I feel that I am too widely traveled to fear an old man who had no better sense than to step out into a thunder-storm with a wash-basin in his hand.

And as for the Indian "hants" or rakish slavers, I, who know a Lamb's Club and many seasons of Broadway runs and one-night stands, need fear them not. At least I will have plots for operettas a-plenty, and at my own door, now that the reign of jazz is over and the voice of true melody is heard in the land.