* * * * *
The cornet wears a wooden gag in its mouth and a battered black derby
hangs over its end. Umpah ump from the trombone, the bull fiddle and the
bassoon. Tangled lyrics from the clarinet. And the cornet cakewalks like a
hoyden vampire, the cornet whinnies like an odalisque expiring in the arms
of the Wizard of Oz.
Lust giggles at a sly jest out of the cornet. Passion thumbs its nose at
the stars out of the cornet. The melody of jazz, the tin pan ghosts of
Chopin, Tchaikowsky, Old Black Joe, Liszt and Mumbo Magumbo, jungle
troubadour of the Congo, come whinnying out from under the pendant derby.
The dancers on the cabaret floor close their eyes and grin to themselves.
The cornet kids them along. When they grow sad it burlesques their sorrow.
The cornet laughs at them. It leers like a satyr master of ceremonies at
them. It is Pan in a clown suit, Silenus on a trick mule, Eros in a
Pullman smoker.
* * * * *
Laugh, dance, jerk, wiggle and kid all you want--but the Lady of the Sea
Foam whispers a secret. Aphrodite, become a female barytone, still takes
herself very seriously. Aphrodite, alas, is always serious. She gurgles a
sonorous plaint out of the saxophone.
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