big circus under the euphonious title of _The Patrol
of the Night Stick_, and the musical press praises particularly the
graphic power of the night stick motive and the verisimilitude of the
escape of the burglar in the coda.

Alas, _Childe Roland!_

Seriously, if our rising young composers--isn't it funny they are always
spoken of as rising? I suppose it's because they retire so late--read
Hanslick carefully, much good would accrue. It is all well enough to
call your work something or other, but do not expect me nor my neighbor
to catch your idea. We may be both thinking about something else,
according to our temperaments. I may be probably enjoying the form, the
instrumentation, the development of your themes; my neighbor, for all we
know, will in imagination have buried his rich, irritable old aunt, and
so your paean of gladness, with its brazen clamor of trumpets, means for
him the triumphant ride home from the cemetery and the anticipated joys
of the post-mortuary hurrah.

XIX

A COLLEGE FOR CRITICS

Yes, it was indeed a hot, sultry afternoon, and as the class settled
down to stolid work, even Mr. Quelson shifted impatiently at the
blackboard, where he was trying to explain to a young pupil from
Missouri that Beethoven did not write his oratorio, _The Mount of
Olives_, for Park and Tilford. It was no use, however, the pupil had
been brought up in a delicatessen foundry and saw everything musical
from the comestible viewpoint.

The sun blazed through the open oriel windows at the western end of the
large hall, and the class inwardly rebelled at its task and thought of
cool, green grottoes with heated men frantically falling over the
home-plate, while the multitude belched bravos as Teddy McCorkle made
three bases. Instead of the national game the class was wrestling with
figured bass and the art of descant, and again it groaned aloud.

Mr. Quelson faced his pupils. In his eyes were tears, but he must do his
duty.

"Gentlemen," he suavely said, "the weather is certainly trying, but
remember this is examination day, and next week you, that is some of
you, will go out into the great world to face its cares, to wrestle for
its prizes, to put forth your strength against the strength of men; in a
word, to become critics of music, and to represent this college, wherein
you have imbibed so much generous and valuable learning."

He paused, and the class, which had pricked up its ears at the word
"imbibe,"