ociating her from that
character, and I have found those who, having seen Mary Garden in only
one part, were quite ready to generalize about her own personality
from the impression they had received.

One of the tests of great acting is whether or not an artist remains
in the picture when she is not singing or speaking. Mary Garden knows
how to listen on the stage. She does not need to move or speak to make
herself a part of the action and she is never guilty of such an
offence against artistry as that committed by Tamagno, who, according
to Victor Maurel, allowed a scene in _Otello_ to drop to nothing while
he prepared himself to emit a high B.

Watching her magnificent performance of Monna Vanna it struck me that
she would make an incomparable Isolde. At the present moment I cannot
imagine Mary Garden learning Boche or singing in it even if she knew
it, but if some one will present us Wagner's (who hated the Germans as
much as Theodore Roosevelt does) music drama in French or English with
Mary Garden as Isolde, I think the public will thank me for having
suggested it.

Or it would be even better if Schoenberg, or Stravinsky, or Leo
Ornstein, inspired by the new light the example of such a singer has
cast over our lyric stage, would write a music drama, ignoring the
technique and the conventions of the past, as Debussy did when he
wrote _Pelleas et Melisande_ (creating opportunities which any
opera-goer of the last decade knows how gloriously Miss Garden
realized). It is thus that the new order will gradually become
established. And then the new art ... the new art of the singer....

_April 18, 1918._

Au Bal Musette

_"Aupres de ma blonde
Qu'il fait bon, fait bon, bon, bon...."_

Old French Song.

Au Bal Musette

It has often been remarked by philosophers and philistines alike that
the commonest facts of existence escape our attention until they are
impressed upon it in some unusual way. For example I knew nothing of
the sovereign powers of citronella as a mosquito dispatcher until a
plague of the insects drove me to make enquiries of a chemist. For
years I believed that knocking the necks off bottles, lacking an
opener, was the only alternative. A friend who caught me in this
predicament showed me the other use to which the handles of high-boy
drawers could be put. It was long my habit to quickly dispose of
trousers which had been disfigured by cigarette