Bargee

The Geisha girls of Japan, skilful with the lute and larynx, forming the apex of Japan's musical culture, were infuriated two weeks ago (TIME, July 16) when they were compared by a committee of 14 moralists to the rude night-club entertainers of Manhattan. Japanese Geisha girls count U. S. music a noisy nonsense and even the finest of U. S. singers their inferiors by far. What last week was their horror to learn that one of the night-club entertainers who had been compared to them was not only their artistic inferior but a member of the lowest class of civilized creatures, a common bargee, the U. S. counterpart of those yellow specimens who live on rafts and junks in the rivers of inferior China. Their annoyance was not unnatural; yet, had they known the true facts concerning the bargee-"Geisha-girl" their annoyance would have vanished and, since Geisha girls are intelligent, they would have been full of sympathy.

The bargee in question was one Isobel Stone, 23, lyric-soprano, who was discovered last week, with her sister, Margaret Stone (Mrs. Richard O'Neill), living rent free upon a wretched scow near the slums of Manhattan. She was not a bargee by birth; her father indeed was the late William A. Stone, onetime (1899-1903) Governor of Pennsylvania, defender of famed Harry K. Thaw. A millionaire and a man of fashion, called "Pennsylvania's greatest Governor," he had died in 1920, his large fortune dissipated in unfortunate speculations. Isobel Stone with her sister Margaret was compelled to earn a living. This she did, being of artistic inclination and equipped with some vocal talent, by singing. After making her debut with Aphrodite in Manhattan, she joined the San Carlo Opera Company, with which she sang Siebel in Faust. Later she became the understudy for more noteworthy performers; of late, a chorus girl, a hanger on at rehearsal halls and an ofttime entertainer or hostess at night clubs, Isobel Stone was compelled to relinquish the idea of a rent-paying existence. Luckily one Gus Clark offered her his dingy and dilapidated float on which she was discovered last week in a state of great and irritable depression which she expressed in this fashion:

"Our relatives sometimes ask us to lunch at the Ritz when they come to New York, but that's really little help when you're starving and can't pay your rent.

"It's not pleasant, especially when you come home late at night in high-heeled shoes and an evening gown, and it's raining, and you have to row yourself to your house in a dinghy that is half full of water.

"We have many rich relatives, but they have no money for their poor relatives.

"Of late I have been reduced to singing at some of the night clubs which I detest.

"Few people realize how difficult it is for a young woman to win her way, her living, on Broadway, even when she is gifted artistically. Broadway, whether in opera or musical comedy, and I have sung in both, is so full of promises, but one cannot exist on that . . . ."