synchronizing the music with the eight-second periods that every bar of it fitted the spirit of the many scores of scenes of the production."
The single man orchestra, the player of the upright piano, need not make so many preparatory gestures. He may with impunity, if he be of an inventive turn of mind or if his memory be good, improvise his score as the picture unreels itself for the first time before what may very well be his astonished vision; after that, he may vary his accompaniment, as the shows of the day progress, improving it here or there, or not, as the case may be, but keeping generally as near to his original performance as possible. He relies, naturally, on a generous use of rum-ti-tum, shivery passages (known to orchestra leaders as "agits," an abbreviation of agitato) to accompany moments of excitement. This music you will remember if you have ever attended a performance of a Lincoln J. Carter melodrama in which a train was wrecked, or a hero rescued from the teeth of a saw, or a heroine pursued by bloodhounds. Recently, in a moving-picture hall on Fourteenth Street in New York, I heard a pianist eke out a half-hour with similar poundings on two or three well-used chords, well-used even in the time of Haydn. The scenes represented the whole of a two-act opera, and the ambitious pianist was try-
