ALL in the trade will concede that E. T. Paull, of the E. T. Paull Music Company, No. 44 West Twenty-ninth street, is a hustler among hustlers. If he had never done anything else to deserve this distinction his latest stroke of enterprise would alone entitle him to it. The "stroke" referred to is the composing and publishing of his latest march, "The Ice Palace," the story of which is like this:

As told in the Musical Courier Trade Extra of that week, Mr. Paull returned from a business trip through the South on Wednesday, February 2. As he had left his wife in Richmond he concluded not to go to his home in Mount Vernon that night, so he took a room in a hotel instead. The next day he visited Teller, the well known music printer.

"You seem to have a good deal of water up your way," remarked Mr. Teller.

"Well I don't know that Twenty-ninth street is any worse than yours," retorted Paull smilingly.

"Yes, but the papers say your place was badly damaged also."

"My place—the papers! what are you talking about?" gasped the astonished publisher.

"I'll show you in a moment; but don't you really know?" Mr. Teller said.

"Why, no. It's all Greek to me," was Mr. Paull's reply. So Mr. Teller went out, bought some New York newspapers and laid them before Mr. Paull's anything but enraptured eyes. This is what he read:

Mount Vernon, N. Y., Wednesday.—This city lays claim to the oddest accident caused by the storm and cold snap. The mishap ruined the interior of the handsomely furnished home of E. T. Paull, a composer of music, at No. 210 South Fifth avenue. The damage amounts to $5,000.

Mr. Paull is a Southerner, not yet acclimated to Northern cold, so early this winter he and his family went south. H. M. Downing, a real estate dealer, was left in charge of the property. Instructions to shut off the water supply were, it appears, neglected by Mr. Paull. Mr. Downing thought of that this morning and visited the Paull house to see if all was well. He got a big surprise the moment he opened the door.

A freezing blast, colder even than the wind outside, struck him. There he saw that the hallway looked like a miniature Chilkoot Pass. Thick ice covered the carpet on the floor. The walls were glazed and immense icycles suspended from the chandeliers. A bronze warrior holding a lamp at the head of a stairway was frozen at his post.

Mr. Downing then pushed open the parlor door and brought a shower of icycles on his head. The apartment resembled an Arctic bower. Portières were frozen stiff in their folds, the piano was an iceberg and Jack Frost had touched up all the frames of the pictures with icy pendants, Mr. Paull's study, adjoining, might have been the den of Jack Frost himself. Even the ink was frozen solid.

The upper floors looked like the caverns of Polar bears. Beds, bureaus, pictures and chairs were incased in ice. As for the cellar, it was a skating rink. There is a floor of ice a foot and a half thick therein.

This transformation of a Mount Vernon dwelling into a North Pole cavern was caused by the freezing of water, which caused pipes to burst in all parts of the house. The force of water in the mains disloged [sic] the ice and the water gushed and flooded the place from cellar to garret. Tomorrow men will be employed removing the ice.—New York Herald.

Mount Vernon, Feb. 2.—E. T. Paull, a musical composer and author, has a large residence at 210 South Fifth avenue. He took his family South last month and forgot to notify the water company to turn off the water in his house. As a result of the recent severe cold snap the water pipes are frozen, and when H. M. Downey, who has charge of the house, entered it this morning to see if everything was all right, he found that every water pipe in the house had burst and flooded it from top to bottom. The basement contains nearly four feet of water and the ice is nearly eight inches thick.

The stairways are miniature Niagaras. Every floor in the house is covered with a coat of ice varying from two to four inches in thickness. The walls are beautifully glazed with a thinner coating of the ice, and the pictures and bric-à-brac are ornamented with glistening icycle pendants. The damage done will amount to several thousand dollars, as every ceiling, the walls and all the furniture are ruined. Mr. Paull has been notified that he is the possessor of an ice palace, and is expected home by Thursday morning.— New York Evening Sun.

Mount Vernon, N. Y., Feb. 3.—By an odd mishap the handsome residence of E. T. Paull, a composer of music, at No. 210 South Fifth avenue, has been transformed into an ice palace.

It was visited to-day by all the neighbors and friends, who put on their skates in the cellar, ate icycles from the chandeliers and explored the upper chambers to see if the host were not entertaining some Eskimo.

Mr. Paull and his family went South for the winter without turning off the water. The cold wave burst the pipes. It will cost him $5,000.—New York Evening Journal.

It goes without saying that Mr. Paull was on the next Mount Vernon bound train. As soon as things could be set to rights at his frappéd residence he summoned his wife home from the South and moved in.

The other evening, as his nimble fingers strayed over the keys of the piano in his parlor, he evolved some strains which he considered worth preserving, and which very soon grew into a stirring march, one of if not the best Mr. Paull has ever composed. Then he cast about him for a title. The newspapers had all spoken of his frozen residence as an "ice palace," why not an "Ice Palace March," with a view of his Klondike-like villa on the title page.

"The very thing!" he cried, and that is how "The Ice Palace March" came to be written. It is now in press. Mr. Paull never lets any grass grow under his shoe leather, you know.