Page:Anecdotes of Great Musicians.djvu/72

60 applied exclusively to himself. So ignorant was Fancelli, who, by the way, had formerly been a baggage porter at Leghorn, that he had to hire one of the opera chorus to write the autographs he gave to admiring damsels. He was once asked to append his signature to the autograph album of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society. His scribe was not at hand, so he undertook the painful operation himself. He got along fairly well with the name, only omitting one "l" and a "c." Not content with that, he attempted to add his pet title, and succeeded, in his schoolboy hand, very well till he got to the final word, the most charming of them all, in his eyes. After he had written an "a" and three "s's," he managed to spread a huge blot of ink on the page which obliterated one of them, and to-day the signature stands,

 

Salomon, a London musician, had as pupil King George III. One day, when the king had not distinguished himself by great practice or skill in playing, the teacher gave him the following classification of fiddlers:—

"Fiddlers, your Majesty, may be divided into three classes: To the first belong those who cannot play at all; to the second those who play badly; and to the third those who play well. You, sire, have already reached the second class."

The majority of the players on all instruments reach only this second class. This feature of the matter is bad enough, but a worse feature is that the most of them are willing to stay there and are not willing to put forth the effort necessary for attaining the third. As to those who try to sing, comparatively few graduate from the first class, and as to those who do sing, only a small minority reach the third.