Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/646

 in mechanics, and particularly the application of pneumatics, as shown in the magnificent American instrument by Jardine & Sons recently erected in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, have rendered the most complicated and extended ensemble effects capable of easy expression, while allowing the organist that amount of muscular repose necessary for the mental demands of his art.

The Spaniards brought over the first organs heard on this continent, but so little is known concerning the subject that the historic attempt of Thomas Brattle to introduce an organ into the King's Chapel, in Boston, in 1713, may be accepted as the earliest reliable contribution to American organ history on record. Brattle's organ is at present in St. John's Chapel, Portsmouth, N. H. Thomas Brattle, a native of Boston, after whom Brattle Street and Brattle Square are named, imported the organ referred to. He bequeathed it to the Brattle Street Church, provided "that within a year from his death they would procure a sober person who could play skillfully thereon with a loud noise, otherwise to the King's Chapel." Whether it was owing to the inability of the management of the favored church to procure a "sober person" capable of playing with a "loud noise" on that historic instrument—which is rather an aspersion on the ability of Boston organists of the time, as well as a reflection on their muscular capacity—or through prejudice against the instrument as an alleged agency of the evil spirit, matters little now; suffice it for the historian to say that it was refused. It was accordingly thrown over on the congregation of King's Chapel and practically sent begging an owner, for King's Chapel also refused to accept it. The executors of Brattle's will having done their duty in the order intimated, refused to cart it away, and after considerable discussion it was allowed to lie in the porch of the church unpacked. It rested there for seven months, until the question was reopened in 1714, ending with the erection of