Now on the bound of Music's native sphere, Whereof he faintly caught some earthward strain, At length he reads the "_Golden Legend_" clear, At length the "_Lost Chord_" finds itself again. [Illustration: SIXTY YEARS OF "PROGRESS"] In musical comedy the high-water mark of popularity was attained by _The Geisha_ in 1896, but though _Punch_ speaks handsomely of Mr. Jones's tuneful numbers--as they deserved--he makes it clear that the success of the piece was chiefly due to the talent and humour of the performers--Marie Tempest and Letty Lind; Monkhouse, Huntley Wright and Hayden Coffin. In 1907 the devastating popularity of _The Merry Widow_ amounted, in _Punch's_ view, as expressed in his "Dirge" on the waltz of that name, to a tyranny rather than a delight; and in the spring of 1913 he was moved to protest, in the name of Music, against the wholesale importation of American coon songs, "Hitchy Koo!" and rag-time generally. In the middle 'nineties the banjo was still fashionable, and the amateur singer a source of grief and wonderment to _Punch_:-- WHY DOST THOU SING? Why dost thou sing? Is it because thou deemest We love to hear thy sorry quavers ring? My poor deluded girl, thou fondly dreamest! Why dost thou sing? Why dost thou sing? I ask thy sad relations-- They shake their heads, and answer with a sigh. They can explain thy wild hallucinations No more than I. Why dost thou sing? Why wilt thou never weary? Why wilt thou warble half a note too flat? I can conceive no reasonable theory To tell me that. Why dost thou sing? O Lady, have we ever In thought or action done thee any wrong? Then wherefore should'st thou visit us for ever With thy one song? _Punch_ gave it up; but in 1910 he declared that "one of the finest efforts accomplished by the gramophone has been the obliteration of the inferior amateur singer." [Sidenote: _Pioneers and Prodigies_] The musical education of the million advanced apace. No more potent agency for the diffusion of a taste for orchestral music has existed in our times than the Promenade Concerts, directed since 1895 by Sir Henry Wood. The creation of this new audience is described with sympathy and delightful humour in _The Promenade Ticket_ by the late and deeply lamented Arthur Hugh Sidgwick. While recognizing these new and beneficent activities, _Punch_ did not forget the splendid pioneer work done by forerunners--notably Sir August Manns, whose seventieth birthday in 1895 is affectionately celebrated in punning verse. The action of the L.C.C. in 1897, which threatened to put a stop to the Queen's Hall Sunday Concerts, reawakened _Punch's_ anti-Sabbatarian zeal. Not much account is taken of serious native composers, but the rise of Elgar's "star" is acknowledged as early as 1904 in the picture of Richter conducting _The Dream of Gerontius_.