FREAKISH FIDDLES.

Otaki Mail, 22 March 1922, Page 3

FREAKISH FIDDLES.

WILLIAM POX'S COLLECTION. If you happen to have any ancient type,of musical instrument around tho house, you might be able to sell it at a good price by writing to William Fox, the well-known American motion picture magnate. Mr Fox finds mental relaxation from those "cares which infest the day" in the assiduous collection of old and freakish musical instruments, both string and brass. In. his palatial offices at 10th Avenue and 53th Street, New York City, the favored (■•'tier may inspect a veritable museum of queer sound-producing instruments ranging from that sixteenth, century harpsichord with which, at a later date, the laughing-eyed Nell Gwyiuie soothed the neurotic King to rosy dalliance.'! down to the very latest 1022 jazz band ; skillet, as favored by strenuous dis- I pensers of the syncopated psalm. In 1 this curious gallery, a hundred old horns and trumpets brood ilently, in I serried array, over their individual . jlmre in daring deeds of dim and dis- : tant days. Here are the actual bugles which have called men to seek "the bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth."' and hoary old harps whose quivering strings timed the martial tramp of tired Roman legions. In one corner, a musical box, once the property of Ex-Kaiser Wilhehu, seems to shrink beneath the ignominy of the unfortunate connection, whilst quaint harmoniphones dating back to the Wars of the Roses, played by spectral fingers breathe in ghostly cadences the story of a forgotten chivalry. Tho spirit of democracy is represented by the old barrel organ of our childhood's days, and what is probably the only mechanical flute in the worlcl, puts the gallery in close touch with the present era, in which engineering, that Juggernaut of modern progress, has crushed beneath its steel-shod wheels the romance, the chivalry, and the "dandyism" of those "good old days," whose praises arc only mumbled to-day by toothless octogenarians in the chimney corners of senility.