PIANOS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 153, 26 June 1878, Page 4

PIANOS.

If WQ were about Go write a book upon modern instruments of torture, we should bead the first chapter " Pianos, and the barbarous and Indiscriminate Use of them." In the hands of our dear sisters they have become moral thumbscrews, beating the old ones of the Inquisition into fits, which is going a good way, for this old iostrulaent of inhumanity must have been very tight fits, to Bay the least of it. When we asßumeour proper position as sole dictator of Queensland, we idtend to have a large quarantine ground set apart, and fenced in with a girlproof fence. loside this fetsce aspiring musicians should have our full leave and license to murder sweet sounds at any hour of the day or night; outside of it it should be death for anybody who had toot passed a stiff musical examination to touch a note. (They might touch notes after the manner of an underpaid bank cleik, and incur a lesser punishment, but for the more heinous offence, death,) We will give in to no man ih our admiration of a really good pianißt: wben the ivory is deftly pressed by g'nlle practised fingerp, white as itself, \ we revel in admiration of performer and performance: our whole JB3thetic being is filled and thrilled with pleasure. "It soothes our paper bress', and lulls the fiercest; critic into rest.'* But wben mamma says, "Play something, Angelina," nnd Angelina by coy reluctance compels us to add our soft persuasion's to mamma's, and so bring upon our devoted head the whole of her musical repertoire, played iv the jovial one-6n-gered style of the present day— we weaken, we pass — Q've us the desert shore, % And 'he fierce tumult Of the tempest's roar. j Ob, why will people persist in teachtog ' every girl they possess music, whethdr she has the necessary qualifications fcjr , the. art or not? Why, above all, ah we haunted evermore by it, owing to modern houses beiug such admirable conductors of sound. We can escape Angelina and her piano, directly; We are not forced to hang enraptured oytv her when she is makiog night beautiful With melody, but indirectly we are at her mercy; she is the barrel-orgsjn nuisance of Quseusland, and there is no peace in the , land, excepting pieces of music. With nose " tiptiited" in scorn, with leg's defiantly spread, an editor sat with his bands in bis bags, end lajangle of tunes in his head— strum, strum, strum, from the first grey daw|n of light, and strum, strum, strum, through most of a weary nighf, till underneath their torch the instrument, painfully wails, they finish — you bet — with a mad duet s and commence iv the ; morning with scales. "0, girls, with sweethearts dear, 0, girls who want to be wiveß, 'tis not pianos you're wearing out, but tortured brot.' era' lives.'-— " Specialities," in the Queenslander.