of whatever is most classical in the realm
of music. You realize that in such a company as this you are no better
than a rank outsider, and that it behooves you to attract as little
attention as possible. There is nobody else here who will be interested
in discussing with you whether the Giants or the Cubs will finish first
next season; nobody except you who cares a whoop how Indiana will go for
president--in fact, most of them probably haven't heard that Indiana
was thinking of going. Their souls are soaring among the stars in a
rarefied atmosphere of culture, and even if you could you wouldn't dare
venture up that far with yours, for fear of being seized by an
uncontrollable impulse to leap off and end all, the same as some persons
are affected when on the roof of a tall building. So you back into the
nearest corner and try to look like a part of the furniture--and wait in
dumb misery.

Usually you don't have to wait very long. These people are beggars for
punishment and like to start early. It is customary to lead off the
program with a selection on the piano by a distinguished lady graduate
of somebody-with-an-Italian-name's school of piano expression. Under no
circumstances is it expected that this lady will play anything that you
can understand or that I could understand. It would be contrary to the
ethics of her calling and deeply repugnant to her artistic temperament
to play a tune that would sound well on a phonograph record. This would
never do. She comes forward, stripped for battle, and bows and peels
off her gloves and fiddles with the piano-stool until she gets it
adjusted to suit her, and then she sits down, prepared to render an
immortal work composed by one of the old masters who was intoxicated at
the time.

She starts gently. She throws her head far back and closes her eyes
dreamily, and hits the keys a soft, dainty little lick--tippy-tap! Then
leaving a call with the night clerk for eight o'clock in the morning,
she seems to drift off into a peaceful slumber, but awakens on the
moment and hurrying all the way up to the other end of Main Street she
slams the bass keys a couple of hard blows--bumetty-bum! And so it goes
for quite a long spell after that: Tippy-tap!--off to the country for a
week-end party, Friday to Monday; bumetty-bum!--six months elapse
between the third and fourth acts; tippetty-tip!--two years later; dear
me, how the old place has changed! Biffetty-biff! Gracious, how time
flies