undone duties, where already lie notes on a comparison of Andalusian mules with the mules of Liane de Pougy, a few scribbled memoranda for a treatise on the love habits of the mole, and a half-finished biography of the talented gentleman who signed his works Nick Carter, if my by this time quite roving eye had not alighted, entirely fortuitously, on one of the forgotten glories of my library, a slender volume entitled Popular American Composers.
I recalled how I had come by this book. Happening into a modest second-hand bookshop on lower Third Avenue, maintained chiefly for the laudable purpose of redistributing paper novels of the Seaside and kindred libraries, of which, alas, we hear very little nowadays, I asked the proprietor if, by chance, he possessed any literature pertaining to the art of music. By way of reply, he retired to the rear of his little room, searched for a space in a litter on the floor, and then returned with a pile of nine volumes or so in his arms. The other titles, such as Great Violinists, Harmony in Thirteen Lessons, and How to Sing, did not interest me, but, in idly turning the pages of this Popular American Composers, I came across a half-tone reproduction of a photograph of Paul Dresser, the only less celebrated brother of Theodore Dreiser, with a short biography of the composer of On the Banks
