, as generally they didn't.
I caught the disease myself; I went to hear it sung.

I only lasted a little while--I confess it unabashedly--if there is such
a word as unabashedly--and if there isn't then I confess it
unashamedly. As well as a mere layman could gather from the opening
proceedings, this opera of Elektra was what the life story of the Bender
family of Kansas would be if set to music by Fire-Chief Croker. In the
quieter moments of the action, when nobody was being put out of the way,
half of the chorus assembled on one side of the stage and imitated the
last ravings of John McCullough, and the other half went over on the
other side of the stage and clubbed in and imitated Wallace, the
Untamable Lion, while the orchestra, to show its impartiality, imitated
something else--Old Home Week in a boiler factory, I think. It moved me
strangely--strangely and also rapidly.

Taking advantage of one of these periods of comparative calm I arose and
softly stole away. I put a dummy in my place to deceive the turnkeys and
I found a door providentially unlocked and I escaped out into the night.
Three or four thousand automobiles were charging up and down Broadway,
and there was a fire going on a couple of blocks up the street, and I
think a suffragette procession was passing, too; but after what I'd
just been through the quiet was very soothing to my eardrums. I don't
know when I've enjoyed anything more than the last part of Elektra, that
I didn't hear.

Yet my reader should not argue from this admission that I am deaf to the
charms of the human voice when raised in song. Unnaturalized aliens of a
beefy aspect vocalizing in a strange tongue while an orchestra of two
hundreds pieces performs--that, I admit, is not for me. But just let a
pretty girl in a white dress with a flower in her hair come out on a
stage, and let her have nice clear eyes and a big wholesome-looking
mouth, and let her open that mouth and show a double row of white teeth
that'd remind you of the first roasting ear of the season--just let her
be all that and do all that, and then let her look right at me and sing
The Last Rose of Summer or Annie Laurie or Believe Me, If All Those
Endearing Young Charms--and I am hers to command, world without end,
forever and ever, amen! My eyes cloud up for a rainy spell, and in my
throat there comes a lump so big I feel like a coach-whip snake that has
inadvertently swallowed a china darning-egg. And when she is thro