at Carnegie Hall, when there were twenty-four pianos and thirty banjos in the band and the Negroes sang G'wine up, Go Down, Moses, Rise and Shine, Run Mary, Run, and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, with less of the old plantation spirit than either Peter or I could have assumed, but when the band broke into ragtime, the banjos twanged, the pianos banged, the blacks swayed back and forth, the roof was raised, and glory was upon us. Once, coming out of Æolian Hall, after a concert given by Elena Gerhardt, we were confronted by a wagon-load of double basses in their trunks. Two of the monsters, with their fat bellies and their long necks, stood vis-à-vis on the sidewalk and seemed to be conversing, while their brothers on the wagon, a full nine, wore the most ridiculously dégagé air of dignity. We will not sit down, not here at any rate, they plainly said, but they did not complain. Peter laughed a good deal at them and remarked that the aristocrats in the French Revolution must have gone to the guillotine in much the same manner, only the absurd double basses in their trunks had no roses to smell. Never have I seen inanimate objects so animate save once, at a rehearsal in the darkened Belasce Theatre, when the curly gold backs of the ornate chairs, peeping over the rails of the boxes, assumed the exact appearance of Louis XIV wigs on stately gentlemen. We heard Toscanini conduct the Ninth Symphony at the Metropolitan Opera House and we went to see Mrs. Leslie Carter play
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