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Old Days And New
by
“She was a daisy, daisy, daisy!
Driving me crazy, crazy, crazy!
Helen of Troy and Venus were to her cross-eyed crones!
She was dimpled and rosy, rosy, rosy!
Sweet as a posy, posy, posy!
How I doted upon her, my Ann Jane Jones!”
You will admit, I think, at first glance, the superior literary quality of these lines; you will perceive at once to what immeasurably higher class of art they belong than the lyrics that librettists forge for us today.
Wall Street broker, poet, green grocer, soldier, banker, lawyer, whatever you are, confess the facts to yourself: you were once as I. You have suffered the same feelings that I suffered. Perhaps with you it was not Della Fox…. Who then? Did saucy Marie Jansen awaken your admiration? Was pert Lulu Glaser the object of your secret but persistent attention? How many times did you go to see Marie Tempest in The Fencing Master, or Alice Nielsen in The Serenade ? Was Virginia Earle in The Circus Girl the idol of your youth or was it Mabel Barrison in The Babes in Toyland ? Theresa Vaughn in 1492, May Yohe in The Lady Slavey, Hilda Hollins in The Magic Kiss, or Nancy McIntosh in His Excellency ? Madge Lessing in Jack and the Beanstalk, Edna May in The Belle of New York, Phyllis Rankin in The Rounders, or Gertrude Quinlan in King Dodo ?
What do you whistle in your bathtub when you are in a reminiscent mood? Is it The Typical Tune of Zanzibar, or Baby, Baby, Dance My Darling Baby, or Starlight, Starbright, or Tell Me, Pretty Maiden, or A Simple Little String, or J’aime les Militaires (if you whistle this, ten to one your next door neighbour thinks you have been to an orchestra concert and heard Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony ), or Sister Mary Jane’s Top Note, or A Wandering Minstrel I, or See How It Sparkles, or the Lullaby from Erminie, which Pauline Hall used to sing as if she herself were asleep, and which Emma Abbott interpolated in The Mikado, or A Pretty Girl, A Summer Night, or the Policeman’s Chorus from The Pirates of Penzance, or The Soldiers in the Park, or My Angeline, or the Letter Song from The Chocolate Soldier, or I’m Little Buttercup, or the Gobble Song from The Mascot, or the Anna Song from Nanon, or the march from Fatinitza, or I’m All the Way from Gay Paree, or Love Comes Like a Summer Sigh, or In the North Sea Lived a Whale, or Jusqu’la, or The Harmless Little Girlie With the Downcast Eyes, or They All Follow Me, or The Amorous Goldfish, or Don’t Be Cross, or Slumber On, My Little Gypsy Sweetheart, or Good-bye Flo, or La Legende de la Mere Angot, or My Alamo Love ?