ere
become, in effect, cabinets; cabinets of souvenirs of Bayreuth. It is
believed among scientists that you could examine the crop of a dead
Bayreuth pilgrim anywhere in the earth and tell where he came from.
But I like this ballast. I think a "Hermitage" scrap-up at eight in the
evening, when all the famine-breeders have been there and laid in their
mementoes and gone, is the quietest thing you can lay on your keelson
except gravel.

THURSDAY.--They keep two teams of singers in stock for the chief roles,
and one of these is composed of the most renowned artists in the
world, with Materna and Alvary in the lead. I suppose a double team is
necessary; doubtless a single team would die of exhaustion in a week,
for all the plays last from four in the afternoon till ten at night.
Nearly all the labor falls upon the half-dozen head singers, and
apparently they are required to furnish all the noise they can for
the money. If they feel a soft, whispery, mysterious feeling they are
required to open out and let the public know it. Operas are given only
on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, with three days of
ostensible rest per week, and two teams to do the four operas; but the
ostensible rest is devoted largely to rehearsing. It is said that the
off days are devoted to rehearsing from some time in the morning till
ten at night. Are there two orchestras also? It is quite likely, since
there are one hundred and ten names in the orchestra list.

Yesterday the opera was "Tristan and Isolde." I have seen all sorts
of audiences--at theaters, operas, concerts, lectures, sermons,
funerals--but none which was twin to the Wagner audience of Bayreuth
for fixed and reverential attention. Absolute attention and petrified
retention to the end of an act of the attitude assumed at the beginning
of it. You detect no movement in the solid mass of heads and shoulders.
You seem to sit with the dead in the gloom of a tomb. You know that they
are being stirred to their profoundest depths; that there are times when
they want to rise and wave handkerchiefs and shout their approbation,
and times when tears are running down their faces, and it would be a
relief to free their pent emotions in sobs or screams; yet you hear not
one utterance till the curtain swings together and the closing strains
have slowly faded out and died; then the dead rise with one impulse and
shake the building with their applause. Every seat is full in the
first act;