"
* * * * *
THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.
Emmet is a name which has heretofore been associated in the public mind
with the Negro Minstrel business. Certain weird barbaric melodies, which
defy all laws of musical composition, but which haunt one like a dream
of a lonely night on some wild African river, are said to have been
written by "OLD EMMET." Is there any such person? Has any one actually
seen "OLD EMMET" in the flesh, and with--say a high hat and a cotton
umbrella? For my part I disbelieve in the popular theory of the origin
of these EMMETIC melodies which stir one so strangely. They are not the
work of any earthly song writer, but are born of some untuned Eolian
harp played upon by uncertain breezes, that murmur the memory of
tropical groves and sigh with the sadness of exile. There is no "OLD
EMMET." If there is, let him be brought forward--not to be chucked out
of the window, as Mrs. F.'s AUNT might suggest,--but to be thanked and
wondered at as an inchoate OFFENBACH, who might, under other
circumstances, have written an American opera-bouffe, or, better still,
as a possible CHOPIN, who might have written a second "March Funebre" as
hopeless and desolate and fascinating as that of the despairing and
poetic Pole.
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