of the Wabash. As Sir George Grove neglected to mention this portentous name in American art in his excellent dictionary (notwithstanding the fact that he devoted sixty-seven pages, printed in double columns, to Mendelssohn), I saw the advantage of adding the little book to my collection. The dealer, when questioned, offered to part with the volume for a total of fifteen cents. Once I had become more thoroughly acquainted with its pages I realized that I would willingly have paid fifteen dollars for it.
This book, indeed, cannot fail to delight Doctor Mencken. There is no reference in its pages to Edgar Stillman Kelley, Miss Gena Branscombe, Louis Adolphe Coerne, Henry Holden Huss, T. Carl Whitmer, Arthur Farwell, Arthur Foote, or A. J. Goodrich. In fact, if we overlook brief notices of John Philip Sousa, Harry von Tilzer, Paul Dresser, Charles K. Harris, and Hattie Starr (whom you will immediately recall as the composer of Little Alabama Coon), it may be stated categorically that the author, Frank L. Boyden, has not hesitated to go to the roots of his subject, brushing aside the music critics and their dicta, and has turned his attention to figures in the art life of America from whom Mencken himself, I feel sure, would not take a single paragraph of praise, so richly is it deserved. I am unfamiliar with the causes con-
