The musicians they can secure make tunes that are most squalid and horrible.
With fathomless imbecility, hoochey koochey strains are on the air while heroes are dying.

The Miserere is in our ears when the lovers are reconciled.

Ragtime is imposed upon us while the old mother prays for her lost boy.

Sometimes the musician with this variety of sympathy abandons himself to thrilling improvisation.
My thoughts on this subject began to take form several years ago, when the film this book has much praised, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, came to town.

The proprietor of one theatre put in front of his shop a twenty-foot sign "The Battle Hymn of the Republic, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, brought back by special request." He had probably read Julia Ward Howe's name on the film forty times before the sign went up.