quence that is unmistakably sincere. He stands
fascinated before the towers and pinnacles of the Hradschin, "a miracle
of tender rose and marble white with golden spots of sunshine that would
have made Claude Monet envious." He pays his devotions to the Chapel of
St. Wenceslaus, "crammed with the bones of buried kings," or, at any
rate, to the shrine of St. John Nepomucane, "composed of nearly two tons
of silver." He is charmed by the beauty of the stout, black-haired,
red-cheeked Bohemian girls, and hopes that enough of them will emigrate
to the United States to improve the fading pulchritude of our own
houris. But most of all, he has praises for the Bohemian cuisine, with
its incomparable apple tarts, and its dumplings of cream cheese, and for
the magnificent, the overpowering, the ineffable Pilsner of Prague. This
Pilsner motive runs through the book from cover to cover. In the midst
of Dutch tulip-beds, Dublin cobblestones, Madrid sunlight and Atlantic
City leg-shows, one hears it insistently, deep down in the orchestra.
The cellos weave it into the polyphony, sometimes clearly, sometimes in
scarcely recognizable augmentation. It is heard again in the wood-wind;
the bassoons grunt it thirstily; it slides around in the violas; it
rises to a stately choral in the brass. And chiefly it is in minor.
Chiefly it is sounded by one who longs for the Pilsen _Urquell_ in a far
land, and among a barbarous and teetotaling people, and in an atmosphere
as hostile to the recreations of the palate as it is to the recreations
of the intellect.

As I say, this Huneker is a foreigner and hence accursed. There is
something about him as exotic as a samovar, as essentially un-American
as a bashi-bazouk, a nose-ring or a fugue. He is filled to the throttle
with strange and unnational heresies. He ranks Beethoven miles above the
native gods, and not only Beethoven, but also Bach and Brahms, and not
only Bach and Brahms, but also Berlioz, Bizet, Bruch and Buelow and
perhaps even Balakirew, Bellini, Balfe, Borodin and Boieldieu. He
regards Budapest as a more civilized city than his native Philadelphia,
Stendhal as a greater literary artist than Washington Irving, "Kuenstler
Leben" as better music than "There is Sunlight in My Soul." Irish? I
still doubt it, despite the _Stammbaum_. Who ever heard of an Irish
epicure, an Irish _flaneur_, or, for that matter, an Irish
contrapuntist? The arts of the voluptuous category are unknown west of
Cherb