From Mothers Knee [Cosmopolitan, January 1921] ARCHIE MOFFAM’S connection with that devastatingly popular ballad, “Mother’s Knee,” was one to which he always looked back later with a certain pride. “Mother’s Knee,” it will be remembered, went through the world like a pestilence. In the United States alone, three million copies were disposed of. For a man who has not accomplished anything outstandingly great in his life, it is something to have been, in a sense, responsible for a song like that; and, though there were moments when Archie experienced some of the emotions of a man who has punched a hole in the dam of one of the larger reservoirs, he never really regretted his share in the launching of the thing. ::::::::::::::::: Archie was only too ready to oblige him. Conversation at the moment was the last thing he himself desired. He managed, with a strong effort, to disengage himself from Mr. Brewster’s eye, and turned to the orchestra dais, where Miss Spectatia Huskisson was now beginning the first verse of Wilson Hymack’s masterpiece. Miss Huskisson, like so many of the female denizens of the Middle West, was tall and blond, and constructed on substantial lines. She was a girl whose appearance suggested the old homestead and fried pancakes and pop coming home to dinner after the morning’s plowing. Even her bobbed hair did not altogether destroy this impression. She attacked the verse of the song with something of the vigor and breadth of treatment with which, in other days, she had reasoned with refractory mules. Whether you wanted to or not, you heard every word. In the momentary lull between verse and refrain, Archie could hear the deep breathing of Mr. Brewster. Involuntarily, he turned to gaze at him once more, and, as he did so, he caught sight of Mr. Connolly and paused in astonishment. Mr. Connolly was an altered man. His whole personality had undergone a subtle change. His face still looked as though hewn from the living rock, but into his eyes had crept an expression which, in another man, might almost have been called sentimental. Incredible as it seemed to Archie, Mr. Connolly’s eyes were dreamy. There was even in them a suggestion of unshed tears. And when, with a vast culmination of sound, Miss Huskisson reached the high note at the end of the refrain and, after holding it as some storming party, spent but victorious, holds the summit of a hard-won redoubt, broke off suddenly, in the stillness which followed there proceeded from Mr. Connolly a deep sigh. Miss Huskisson began the second verse. And Mr. Brewster, seeming to recover from some kind of a trance, leaped to his feet.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 04:50:56 +0000