there is not a vacant one in the last. If a man would be
conspicuous, let him come here and retire from the house in the midst of
an act. It would make him celebrated.

This audience reminds me of nothing I have ever seen and of nothing
I have read about except the city in the Arabian tale where all the
inhabitants have been turned to brass and the traveler finds them after
centuries mute, motionless, and still retaining the attitudes which they
last knew in life. Here the Wagner audience dress as they please, and
sit in the dark and worship in silence. At the Metropolitan in New York
they sit in a glare, and wear their showiest harness; they hum airs,
they squeak fans, they titter, and they gabble all the time. In some
of the boxes the conversation and laughter are so loud as to divide the
attention of the house with the stage. In large measure the Metropolitan
is a show-case for rich fashionables who are not trained in Wagnerian
music and have no reverence for it, but who like to promote art and show
their clothes.

Can that be an agreeable atmosphere to persons in whom this music
produces a sort of divine ecstasy and to whom its creator is a very
deity, his stage a temple, the works of his brain and hands consecrated
things, and the partaking of them with eye and ear a sacred solemnity?
Manifestly, no. Then, perhaps the temporary expatriation, the tedious
traversing of seas and continents, the pilgrimage to Bayreuth stands
explained. These devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion.
It is only here that they can find it without fleck or blemish or any
worldly pollution. In this remote village there are no sights to see,
there is no newspaper to intrude the worries of the distant world,
there is nothing going on, it is always Sunday. The pilgrim wends to his
temple out of town, sits out his moving service, returns to his bed with
his heart and soul and his body exhausted by long hours of tremendous
emotion, and he is in no fit condition to do anything but to lie torpid
and slowly gather back life and strength for the next service. This
opera of "Tristan and Isolde" last night broke the hearts of all
witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some who have heard of
many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I feel
strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the sane person in a
community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all
others see; the one groping savag