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OF A FAMILY OF MUSICIANS

The Organist of the First Congregational Church and His Antecedents.

W. T. Taber and His Accomplishments -- The Puritan Boy Learning the Organ in the Deserted Church.

[Drawing]
The wonderful thing about music -- heavenly maid -- is that she grows young whenever she is wooed. Ordinary women lose a few wrinkles out of their faces, and walk with lighter step, too, when they are loved, but at most they can only enjoy life for a part of a century, whereas music keeps dancing on down through the ages, always growing fairer to look upon, whether she wears purple robes and swings her timbrel of triumph by the Red Sea or mimics the white woes of Elsa of Braban upon the modern stage.

The lovers of music are different from the lovers of other women, because they are born with this love implanted in their souls, and no sooner do they hear the far off callings of the voice of her they are destined to live for than they cry, without so much as looking on her face: "Here, by God's rood, is the one maid for me."

These lovers come from every country on earth, and it is said that some as true crouch over the fire under the pale icelandic sky, as those who lift impassioned eyes and voices under the [hronding?] stars of Italy.

One finds these lovers right at one's own door, looking very much like other people, to be sure, but wearing on their hearts an amulet against old age and carking care.

Not so very many years ago there was born in Sherborn, Mass., one of these fortunate persons. Almost every one in Omaha knows him -- W. T. Taber, organist of the First Congregational church.

There were certain localities in the old Puritan and Pilgram districts where to be born a musician was a distinct misfortune. The frightful chill of a dogmatic and autoeratic faith blew on all the flowers of beauty and blighted them. Wordly happiness was a crime, and music, being one of those things which conferred happiness was regarded as frivolous and dangerous. But in this desert of arid schism there were a few little onses where the esthetics grew and were cherished for a hundred years past. There was one in Maine; there was one in New York city; and there was one in Massachusetts.

Sherborn lies within a district which has given to America some of her best musical festivals and her finest musicians. So no one complained when Mr. Taber, then a shy and lank lad, hurried two miles after school to the old Pilgrim church, and climbed into the dusky organ left to play in solitude on the great organ. The occupation was at once an indulgence and a study. Each day the secret of some new harmony was learned; the function of another pedal, or the purpose of a stop, to many came there in the silence, into the knowledge of the boy -- a very shy boy, who did not like to talk, and who was even anxious that no one should know how well he was beginning to play. He shrank from voicing his enthusiasm; he was afraid that someone would discover in him an emotion. And he did not like it when anyone stole into the chilly to find out what made the organ swell so on a week day.

Practicing of a laborious sort was not a necessity with this boy. He read music with as much ease and more interest than he did letters. When he opened a music book it was to go through it from cover to cover, with avidity, as one reads a novel. And no one found any fault, or told him he was a fool or a coxcomb, as is often the habit in America when a boy is detected with a musical talent concealed about his person.

But then, who could have found fault? There was his grand-uncle, who had played the same organ for thirty years. there was his grandfather who organized the first brass band anywhere around Boston, and who could blow on any kind of an instrument you could get wind into and music out of; and another grand-0uncle, who sold pipes and horns, fiddles and flutes, melodeons and music; and there was his mother, who liked to sing better than to do anything else; and cousins and uncles and aunts, who made up a sort of faintly and musical society. None of these, it is evident, could with consistency find any fault with the lad.

OF A FAMILY OF MUSICIANS

The Organist of the First Congregational Church and His Antecedents.

W. T. Taber and His Accomplishments -- The Puritan Boy Learning the Organ in the Deserted Church.

[Drawing]
The wonderful thing about music -- heavenly maid -- is that she grows young whenever she is wooed. Ordinary women lose a few wrinkles out of their faces, and walk with lighter step, too, when they are loved, but at most they can only enjoy life for a part of a century, whereas music keeps dancing on down through the ages, always growing fairer to look upon, whether she wears purple robes and swings her timbrel of triumph by the Red Sea or mimics the white woes of Elsa of Braban upon the modern stage.

The lovers of music are different from the lovers of other women, because they are born with this love implanted in their souls, and no sooner do they hear the far off callings of the voice of her they are destined to live for than they cry, without so much as looking on her face: "Here, by God's rood, is the one maid for me."

These lovers come from every country on earth, and it is said that some as true crouch over the fire under the pale icelandic sky, as those who lift impassioned eyes and voices under the [hronding?] stars of Italy.

One finds these lovers right at one's own door, looking very much like other people, to be sure, but wearing on their hearts an amulet against old age and carking care.

Not so very many years ago there was born in Sherborn, Mass., one of these fortunate persons. Almost every one in Omaha knows him -- W. T. Taber, organist of the First Congregational church.

There were certain localities in the old Puritan and Pilgram districts where to be born a musician was a distinct misfortune. The frightful chill of a dogmatic and autoeratic faith blew on all the flowers of beauty and blighted them. Wordly happiness was a crime, and music, being one of those things which conferred happiness was regarded as frivolous and dangerous. But in this desert of arid schism there were a few little onses where the esthetics grew and were cherished for a hundred years past. There was one in Maine; there was one in New York city; and there was one in Massachusetts.

Sherborn lies within a district which has given to America some of her best musical festivals and her finest musicians. So no one complained when Mr. Taber, then a shy and lank lad, hurried two miles after school to the old Pilgrim church, and climbed into the dusky organ left to play in solitude on the great organ. The occupation was at once an indulgence and a study. Each day the secret of some new harmony was learned; the function of another pedal, or the purpose of a stop, to many came there in the silence, into the knowledge of the boy -- a very shy boy, who did not like to talk, and who was even anxious that no one should know how well he was beginning to play. He shrank from voicing his enthusiasm; he was afraid that someone would discover in him an emotion. And he did not like it when anyone stole into the chilly to find out what made the organ swell so on a week day.