utely no choice in the matter.
You have been a free man all your life. How can you complain of not
being in the market? Why don't you go and put yourself in the market?

DUeHRING. Oh, the haggling--the shouting--the meanness you meet with! I
have tried it a hundred times.

GERARDO. One must do what one is capable of doing and not what one is
incapable of doing.

DUeHRING. Everything has to be learned first.

GERARDO. One must learn that which one is capable of learning. How am I
to know if the case is not very much the same with your work as a
composer.

DUeHRING. I _am_ a composer, Mr. Gerardo.

GERARDO. You mean by that, you have devoted your whole strength to the
writing of operas.

DUeHRING. Quite so.

GERARDO. And you hadn't any left to bring about a performance.

DUeHRING. Quite so.

GERARDO. The composers whom I know go about it just the other way. They
slap their operas on paper the best way they know and keep their
strength for bringing about a performance.

DUeHRING. They are a type of composer I don't envy.

GERARDO. They would reciprocate that feeling, Sir. These people do
count. One must be _something_. Name me a single famous man who did not
_count_! If one is not a composer, one is something else, that's all,
and there's no need of being unhappy about it, either. I was something
else myself before I became a Wagner singer--something, my efficiency
at which nobody could doubt, and with which I was entirely satisfied.
It is not for _us_ to say what we are intended for in this world. If it
were, any Tom, Dick, or Harry might come along! Do you know what I was
before they discovered me? I was a paperhanger's apprentice. Do you
know what that is like! (Indicating by gesture.) I put paper on
walls--with paste. I don't conceal my humble origin from anybody. Now
just imagine, that as a paperhanger I should have taken it into my head
to become a Wagner singer! Do you know what they would have done to me?

DUeHRING. They would have sent you to the madhouse.

[Illustration: LEO TOLSTOY]

_Permission Albert Langen, Munich_
FROM OLAF GULBRANSSON'S "FAMOUS CONTEMPORARIES"

GERARDO. Exactly, and rightly so. Whoever is dissatisfied with what he
is will not get anywhere as long as he lives. A healthy man does that
at which he is successful; if he fails, he chooses another calling. You
spoke of the judgment of your friends. It does not take much to obtain
expressions of approbation and admiration which