In Twenty-seventh or Twenty-eighth Street, or anywhere along Broadway from Madison to Greeley Squares, are the parlors of a score of publishers, gentlemen who coördinate this divided world for song publishing purposes. There is an office and a reception-room; a music-chamber, where songs are tried, and a stock room. Perhaps, in the case of the larger publishers, the music-rooms are two or three, but the air of each is much the same. Rugs, divans, imitation palms make this publishing house more bower than office. Three or four pianos give to each chamber a parlor-like appearance. The walls are hung with the photos of celebrities, neatly framed, celebrities of the kind described. In the private music-rooms, rocking-chairs. A boy or two waits to bring _professional copies_ at a word. A salaried pianist or two wait to run over pieces which the singer may desire to hear. Arrangers wait to make orchestrations or take down newly schemed out melodies which the popular composer himself cannot play. He has evolved the melody by a process of whistling and must have its fleeting beauty registered before it escapes him forever. Hence the salaried arranger. Into these parlors then, come the mixed company of this distinctive world: authors who have or have not succeeded, variety artists who have some word from touring fellows or know the firm, masters of small bands throughout the city or the country, of which the name is legion, orchestra-leaders of Bowery theaters and uptown variety halls, and singers. “You haven’t got a song that will do for a tenor, have you?” The inquirer is a little, stout, ruddy-faced Irish boy from the gas-house district. His common clothes are not out of the ordinary here, but they mark him as possibly a non-professional seeking free copies. “Sure, let me see. For what do you want it?” “Well, I’m from the Arcadia Pleasure Club. We’re going to give a little entertainment next Wednesday and we want some songs.” “I think I’ve got just the thing you want. Wait till I call the boy. Harry! Bring me some professional copies of ballads.” The youth is probably a representative of one of the many Tammany pleasure organizations, the members of which are known for their propensity to gather about east and west side corners at night and sing. One or two famous songs are known to have secured their start by the airing given them in this fashion on the street corners of the great city. Upon his heels treads a lady whose ruffled sedateness marks her as one unfamiliar with this half-musical, half-theatrical atmosphere. “I have a song I would like to have you try over, if you care to.” The attending publisher hesitates before even extending a form of reception. “What sort of a song is it?” “Well, I don’t exactly know. I guess you’d call it a sentimental ballad. If you’d hear it I think you might----”