“Glorious Times for Newspaper Editors and Correspondents”: Whitman at the New Orleans Daily Crescent, 1848-1849

We announce with true pleasure the arrival of the Steyermarkische (so called from the Austrian dependency whence they come) corps of musicians, already mentioned, some days past, in our columns. This fine band consists of eighteen performers; each a perfect master of the instrument on which he plays. . . . When you visit the performances of the members of this band, you are struck, at the very beginning, with the signs they show of superior taste—even before you discover, as you will when the first three or four notes are played, their surpassing genius. You see enter some eighteen gentlemen , quiet and at ease in their manners, dressed in plain black; no airs, no clap-trap, none of the little arts so usual in most public performers. The leader steps forward quietly and modestly with an obeisance, not that of the dancing master. He is extremely youthful, and in his beauty you see the intellectual mingling of genius. No flourishing of a wand by the white-gloved hand, no pretension, no melo-dramatic waiting and coquetting, offends you, as in so many other cases. You are saved even the discordant tuning of instru-ments. 33 There are some people in this world of inhabited creation that supposed—vainly suppose— that if children—little immortals in jackets and trowsers—only have a plenty of bread and meat wherewith to cram their stomachs, and a trifle of clothing withal, that the grand totality of parental duty, in all its length and breadth and importance, is abundantly fulfilled. As for the rest—why, the streets and the highways can open wide their arms and receive them. 73