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 alive. Finding that it produced a magnificent tone, he purchased it, whereupon his playing improved so marvellously that he got an engagement at the Queen's Hall. Coming home very drunk one night, he staggered out of bed at two o'clock in the morning and took the flute out of its case to have a look at it. For the life of him, he could not get it back into its case. In drunken frenzy he seized it by the end and dashed it against the edge of the chest of drawers, again and again. "He cursed it, loosed it, and it seemed to spring at him; like a warm, flexible, snaky cord it clipped his throat A rustle, a rattle, a thick breath, a triumphant hiss. The flautist gasped, and fell backward against the dingy bed;" where the next morning he was found dead with a mark on his throat.

American writers often mention the flute. There is a pathetic story "The Flute-player" in Harper's Magazine, May, 1908, which tells of a blind flautist, who played a tiny flute "half pipe, half reed," for coppers in an archway; it has, however, no special reference to the flute. But in Mr. James L. Allen's Flute and Viol, we find a charming portrait of an old Kentucky parson, whose "shy divinity" was his flute, which was hung by a blue ribbon above the meagre top shelf of books. "The older he grew and the more patient and dreamy his grey eyes, always the more and more devotedly he blew his little friend." He used to play late at night before going to bed, till he almost fell asleep. "They