with all the prayers he could remember. . . . Crusoe must not meet with sudden death, rather an accident among the cliffs that would allow him to continue his memoirs from time to time. I would have the last page of the manuscript relate Crusoe's anxiety for Friday, who he foresees will die of grief, and Friday's last act, the placing the manuscript hard by the grave, which would be necessary for the completion of the story, for it is the manuscript that explains to the captain of the next ship that visits the island the presence of the skeleton by the grave. The captain's reading the manuscript would have given Defoe an opportunity to evoke a new soul, the captain's. How the poor savage must have grieved for his saviour and master! 'Like a dog,' he mutters as he turns the last page."
While reading these lines my mind reverted to a conversation I once held with the sage of Forty-second Street, Oscar Hammerstein, relative to his next production of opera. Oscar's idea was that when he again presented opera he should lay as violent hands as seemed expedient on the published texts of composers, transposing, rearranging, adding, subtracting, in order that the entertainment might be made more brisk, more appetizing to the customers. He spoke with particular emphasis concerning Aida, in which the principal tenor air occurs a few moments after
