ing, with his three meagre chords, to give his audience the effect of singers, principals and chorus, and orchestra.
A certain periodical, devoted to the interests of the moving-picture industry, conducts a department as first aid to the musical leaders and pianists who figure at these shows. In a recent number the editor of this department gives it as his solemn opinion that musicians who read fiction are the best equipped to play for pictures. Then, with an almost tragic parenthesis, he continues: "Reading fiction is the last diversion that the average musician will follow. He feels that all the necessary romance is to be found in his music." Facts are dead, says this editor in substance, but fiction is living and should make you weep. When you cry, all that remains for you to do is to think of a tune which will go hand in hand with the cause of your tears; this will serve you later when a similar scene occurs on the silver sheets.
There is one tune which every capable moving-picture pianist has discovered will fit any Keystone picture. For the benefit of the uninitiated I may state that in the Keystone farces some one gets kicked or knocked down or spat upon several times in almost every scene. I am ignorant of the title of this tune, but wherever Keystone pictures are shown, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Grand
