crystallized within me, a feeling that concerts should not be given in halls, a feeling that even the idea of the concert as it exists is a false and artificial conception. It is impossible for me to enjoy music in a brilliantly lighted, badly ventilated auditorium, in the midst of a crowd of elderly, anserine ladies and gentlemen, or rapt or bored or merely fatuous juveniles, the conductor panting and sweating, the men of the band sawing and blowing, and a soprano weighing four hundred pounds puffing through Ocean, thou mighty monster! The zest for conductors, Dirigentenliebe, is an amusing form of nymphomania. For there are ladies who prefer the baton to the blade. Each must have her own particular Kapellmeister. There is impending danger of an epidemic of this neurotic disorder, and I do not think it an improbable result that, in the course of three or four years, New York will have thirty or forty symphony orchestras. I must admit that attending their concerts would give me coeliac pains, but it amuses me to watch the fandango from the safe distance which my garret affords. It is from that distance, indeed, that I shall watch all concerts henceforth.
Let us consider the occasion to which I have just referred. The estimable ladies and gentlemen who form the choir of the Schola Cantorum, the gentlemen in evening dress, the ladies in white
