At the end of this month British players of the mouth-organ will meet in London to decide the national championship of their instrument. They will do more than that, for it seems to be claimed that their particular form of music hath charms to soothe even the savage influenza microbe, which is again at work in our midst. At least one distinguished candidate for this month╒s championship has been explaining that playing the mouth-organ is regarded by doctors╒ as ╥a real aid to health╙ because it ╥develops the lungs and air-passages and prevents catarrhal trouble.╙ If that is so, enthusiasts for the instrument do well to hold their competition in January; as they trill forth the strains of ╥Annie Laurie╙ (which is this year╒s test-piece and will be successively rendered by more than a hundred competitors!) they also fortify their bosoms against the bitter blasts of mid-winter. Indeed, if we all played the mouth-organ more regularly and industriously, perhaps, that old enemy the ╥common cold,╙ which at present completely baffles the medical profession, would ╥pass in music out of sight,╙ as the poet of ╥Locksley Hall╙ has sung in a slightly different but not more appropriate connection. But it is to be feared that there are those who will still look down on the mouth-organ, even after this hygienic possibility has been explained to them ╤those who would class it with the Jew╒s harp among the instruments of curiosity rather than culture. But this is to overlook both its antiquity and its poetic associations. What is the mouth-organ but the direct descendant of the Pan-pipes of the classical world? The Greeks would have called it a syrinx, which, at once brings back to mind the legend of the water-nymph beloved of Pan. To a truly sensitive mind even a modern small boy doing his worst with it might serve to recall the shepherds of THEOCRITUS, who certainly numbered among their other idyllic qualities a notable freedom from nasal catarrh.
