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and also awakens the appreciation of the hearer. (Here opens a most tempting side-vista of talk about song, worded music, its powers, its relations, its limitations; that, however, "is another story.") But if the coloring of sculpture goes beyond this and is laid on imitatively, then the sculpture and painting are both degraded by the effort at unnatural union, and the result sinks to the level of waxwork, which has its own place and its own interest in exhibitions like Madame Tussaud's, but which is not fine art. And in a precisely similar way, the union attempted in music-drama, though proved to be a failure as fine art, may and does find a legitimate place and interest of its own in the shapes of operetta, light opera, opera bouffe, musical extravaganza, et id omne genus, in which " everything goes" because nothing is serious. Some claimants have told me that the music-drama absurdities, crudities, and crimes against nature are to be accepted seriously as conventions (I suppose this includes their beloved leit Motif) which are employed to convey serious and valuable ideas; but this view just as surely brings the music-drama down, and to the lower level of decorative art, which also deals with conventions and unnaturalities, and very successfully too, but which is not fine art.

Others assert that the music-drama of our day is a regeneration of the lyric drama or tragedy of the Greeks; and that because the alliance of their recitations of dramatic poetry with their music was an accepted art form in that glorious period, therefore the marriage of our dramatic acting with our music must be accepted as a justified art form. Certainly this claim has sometimes been presented with a fascinating display of scholarship, and with erudite instances arrayed in seductive graces of thought and language. But as well might they claim that because Greek actors and orators chanted, in order to make themselves heard in those vast open theatres

where speech was useless, therefore our actors and orators ought to chant. As well might they insist that we must bring back the masks, and the chorus, and the choric dances. I love scholarship as I do music; but the new wine of modern life, thought, culture, and feeling cannot be held in those old forms, any more than one can bring back that national spirit which enabled a fool who could win a foot-race to lift his name into the national chronology. We do not want that spirit revived, any more than we wish for that old Bowery school of acting, once so popular, which our musicdrama acting in some points so much resembles.

Many a time have all these arguments been earnestly placed before music lovers in the effort to show them that serious grand opera and music-drama have no reasonable basis as works of art; and almost as many times have I been met, not by answering arguments, but by simple statements, such as "But I truly think thus," "I enjoy this," "I like that," "I admire the other." Here comes in the old adage de gustibus. It is useless to argue in such cases, but I have sometimes been tempted to say, by way of rejoinder, that the stoners of Stephen truly thought they were doing God service; and by way of reductio ad absurdissimum, that some men still enjoy chewing tobacco; that some neighborhoods are known to like-molasses on their pork; that some nations are known to admire three hundred pounds of flesh on the female form. This latter method seems the surest and quickest way of opening such blinded eyes to see that the acknowledgment of perverted thoughts and vitiated tastes never in the least justifies them, and that their existence is no excuse whatever for their persistence against proof and against the truth of nature.

Here at last devotion to truth and to candor compels me to a confession of a little remnant of indwelling sin, perhaps

of a little backsliding, since, in spite of all this reason and conviction, I find my self still so much the victim of surviving vitiated tastes and habits as to get a good deal of musical enjoyment from much that has been here condemned, espe

cially if I shut my eyes to the acting, which, however, I seldom do; never if there is a spectacle, or a tableau, or even a ballet.

But all the same I do firmly believe that serious grand opera or music-drama is an artistic blunder; that it is approaching recognition as such; and that even in this stage of the world's thought about art it is almost an anachronism. Except in the spectacular form, its pass

ing may be prophesied because it is founded on a falsehood; for "Magna est veritas et prevalebit," and when it does, then farewell to serious opera, with all other falsehoods in art.

May we all strive to limit our lovings, and to turn our likings to the true flowers of art, and not allow our affections to fix themselves on any parasitic growths, lest haply we should be found fighting against truth, which sounds so very much like a sermon that I will close with another pious wish (but alas! without any hope): that by it the theatric devil may be cast out from a few of the claimants, and they be turned from the errors of their ways to a true and reasonable art faith. William F. Biddle.

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THE WHIRLIGIG OF FORTUNE.

I CANNOT remember when the unconquerable longing for Paris first took possession of me. I am sometimes inclined to think that, in spite of my Yankee lineage, I must have been born with it; for when I was a very small boy my brain bore a highly colored impression, largely fanciful, of that city's principal features, and I could have passed a creditable examination upon the darkest scenes of its history, which had for me a mysterious, absorbing interest. Later, this interest deepened into a passion, so that France became my nation by right of choice, if not of birth, and its capital the one place of all others that I desired not merely to see, but to know. Of course, by that time I had accustomed myself to think solely of the delusive pinchbeck Second Empire Paris, through which Napoleon the little bowled luxuriously behind his outriders, the light-hearted ringleader in a perpetual masquerade. Now and then a fortunate friend went off for a peep at the show, and came back bringing me the latest news of it, with the freshest knick-knack from the Rue de Rivoli in golden lacquer that soon grew tarnished in our uncongenial climate. Long before the settled purpose to take my own part in the revel seemed to approach its accomplishment, I had acquired a small collection of such articles de Paris, and might have drawn a warning moral from their dingy surfaces but that my eyes still held the glamour of youth in them. When I took down my Æsop, it was only to read the fable; to me the application was tiresome and profitless.

Everything comes to him who waits, even though he be the poorest of earth's creatures; and the Garners, in point of worldly goods, stood almost at the foot of the respectable class in our community. Indeed, I have heard that "as poor as Tim Garner" was a favorite form

of comparison when I went to school. The boys had no need to go out of their way for the proverbial Job's turkey or church mouse, with my poverty's picturesqueness always before them; but they were considerate enough not to taunt me with what I could not help; and very soon, with two or three exceptions, they passed out of my life, getting on in the world by divers pleasant paths, while I, with the necessity of earning my pittance constantly goading me, entered a counting-room by the lowest round of the mercantile ladder. There for a time, without perceptible advancement, I ground out a wretched existence, developing only a capacity for patient waiting that was truly pathetic in view of the impossible day-dream that sustained me; this being none other than the grand tour itself, with Paris for its goal. So I watched the ships of my employers discharge upon the musty wharves, and faithfully kept tally of precious cargoes that were not mine, confident that some bright morning my own ship would come in. At last, as I have already hinted, it came and went, clearing for the Fortunate Islands with my effects on board. I was not clad, to be sure, in all the independent luxury of purple and fine linen which the dream had foreshadowed. But when dreams come true in this world, they do it by halves, generally speaking.

In fact, I was not an independent passenger at all, but a mere shipment, duly entered and labeled like a bale of merchandise. A certain American banking firm in Paris had sent out for a junior clerk, who was to be young, active, quick at figures, and, above all, home-made. Hearing of this, I applied for the place, and, thanks to my youth, to my fairly good address, and especially, perhaps, to my family name, which, I am proud to say, has long been a synonym for hon

esty, I obtained it. The pay was small, smaller by a good deal than that I earned at home, but it was clearly intimated that the house of Markham & Wade, while binding itself by no extravagant promises, would do better for me later on, if I gave satisfaction. In this hint I found a golden hope; for these men had begun as I was beginning, and were still young enough to remember the struggle of that earlier time. Their enviable reputation for liberality in small matters influenced me even more than the report of their financial standing, which was undoubtedly good. The feeble opposition of my timorous female relatives, who would have preferred to keep me by them a little longer, I speedily overruled, and, bidden to decide the question for myself, decided for Paris,

that cabalistic word which, cast into the scale against far greater odds, alone would have carried the day.

I had but just turned twenty when, old in aims and expectations, but very young in worldly experience, I was thus packed off for France, with a sudden, desperate uncertainty about the date of my arrival there. For this first Atlantic passage of mine occurred in the autumn of 1870, and the cloud of war hung thick over Paris, which was already in a state of siege. My plans, consequently, underwent a change at the last moment, and, in obedience to a cable message from the house which I already called mine, I proceeded to Paris by way of London, where Markham & Wade had established their headquarters for the time being. It was a queer, shabby makeshift of a place in the Strand, into which they moved for a month or two at most, as was then supposed. But the situation across the Channel grew painfully complicated; and our London business increased proportionately, until by the end of the winter the temporary shelter, enlarged and renovated, had become a tower of strength, our chief source of supply and profit. Thereafter we heard

The new

no talk of its abandonment. house had justified itself, much as a boy does, when, coming to man's estate, he leaves the parental roof and takes his life into his own hands.

All London winters are gloomy, and that one was peculiarly so. I suppose we had no more black fog than usual, though for weeks together the sun never shone; but the war news was not exhilarating, and the town swarmed with French refugees, whose mournful faces attended us everywhere. Mainly on their account the newspapers were given over to the wildest rumors, according to which Paris, thrown into a light blaze every few days by the Prussian shells, must be little better than a vast ruin. "At that moment the Arc de Triomphe crumbled and fell" was the favorite report of the nameless eye-witness charged with the agreeable duty of keeping our excitement at the proper pitch. Since all regular communication was cut off, we had often no means of disproving him, but could only pace the sombre London streets and wonder if our luxurious rezde-chaussée in the Rue Saint - Arnaud was really an ash-heap; until letters by balloon-post from our beleaguered staff there would relieve our minds, at the same time filling our cramped office with anxious Frenchmen eager to pick up any crumb of comfort.

Though the prospect of my transference seemed now more than ever remote, I remained still booked for Paris, hoping to enter the French house upon resumption of its business, which, naturally, during the siege was altogether suspended. Meanwhile I had my new trade to learn, and soon mastered its rudiments in days of laborious detail that commonly extended far into the night. My best friends in all the London force were Flack, the head bookkeeper, who held me ever in his eye, and Sam Ryeder, whose desk adjoined mine. The former, a simple, fatherly Warwickshire man of fifty-odd troubled

years, waddled like a duck under a burden of flesh that would have made the fortune of a Falstaff. I could not imagine why he should have failed utterly in his youthful attempt to be an actor, until I learned that he had ventured out upon the provincial boards in the rôle of Hamlet. Then I understood it all, and him with it. This unhappy little incident furnished the key to his character, which was remarkable for nothing except a total lack of the reasoning power. Throughout his checkered career - I heard the whole sad story little by little — he had persistently taken things wrong end foremost, simply because he could not determine which the wrong end was. Even in bookkeeping, that happy huntingground of the unsuccessful, Mr. Flack went entirely by precedents, and at the turning of a new leaf frankly confessed his helplessness, like a mere beginner. His boyish simplicity made friends for him in spite of himself. The dogged cheerfulness underlying it was probably not the result of a definite intention to make the best of adversity. It arose, I am convinced, from the fact that he could see his way to getting three reasonably good meals for the day and the morrow; beyond that Mr. Flack assuredly never looked.

Sam Ryeder was of so different a complexion that at first sight it seemed as if no stronger contrast to Mr. Flack's ineffectiveness could possibly be conceived, though in reality the two natures possessed striking points of resemblance. A compact little American whose years were but twenty-seven, unaggressive in his nationality, of pleasant manners and well-modulated speech, he had made a brilliant start in life that proved but a flash in the pan; then, buffeted about the world, he had suffered many reverses, without losing a particle of the enthusiasm which, though it was a perpetual delight to others, stood between him and his own success. He knew many men, many lands, and with ready

wit and keen intelligence could talk upon almost any subject convincingly. But when it came to action, his heart got the better of his head and made him a dangerous guide. His landscapes were all sunlight; and without shadows there could be no pitfalls, — he would not hear of them. Of course, a sanguine disposition like this is no defect so long as things go well, and of late they had combined themselves to Sam's advantage amazingly. Just before my arrival, some suggestion of his, attracting the partners' notice, was carried out at once, and promotion with increase of pay followed it. Advancement, when it once set in, being rapid in the house of Markham & Wade, every one now felt that Sam Ryeder's star was in the ascendant, while nobody grudged him his small stroke of luck. We all liked him; and as I had been placed in his immediate charge to acquire the ways of the office, there soon sprang up between us an intimacy, long unbroken, that is still among my cheeriest remembrances of those faroff foreign days. off foreign days. He found lodging for me next his own, -a "two-pair back" in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, where we stretched our legs and minds together over the cindery hard-coal fire, after a late dinner, substantial but cheap, in some minor restaurant of the Strand. On Sundays we dined better, sometimes at Hampton Court or Kew; and I can even recall one monumental meal of ours on the terrace at the Star and Garter, which cost us rigid economy at luncheon - bars for a whole fortnight. The palate seems to have a special chamber in the memory, where flavors of choice dishes, eaten long ago, are preserved, unmingled and intact, with startling distinctness.

Sam and I had other tastes in common beside these material ones. We admired English books, but scoffed at English pictures, and we deplored the smoke-stained ugliness of London. Inclining to gayety as a flower does to the

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