Music: Flowerless

The arts are reputed to confer immortality on their practitioners. Pictures, books, symphonies have a certain agreeable permanence, keeping their composers persistently before the posthumous public. Despite the efforts of the Victor Talking Machine Co., there remains a trace of the ephemeral in the fame of the interpreters of music—even the most exalted of them.

Travelers from Italy report a moving instance of the limitations of the memory of musical mankind. Enrico Caruso died three years ago, leaving millions of dollars and admirers. He was, it may be affrmed with security, one of the greatest singers the world has ever known—and one of the most beloved. Yet his tomb, in Naples, most musical of cities, has been observed to be without a single flower—mute witness to the evanescence of man’s favor.