e of the pit and
gallery, too.

Another time, we went to Mannheim and attended a shivaree--otherwise an
opera--the one called "Lohengrin." The banging and slamming and booming
and crashing were something beyond belief. The racking and pitiless pain
of it remains stored up in my memory alongside the memory of the time
that I had my teeth fixed.

There were circumstances which made it necessary for me to stay through
the four hours to the end, and I stayed; but the recollection of that
long, dragging, relentless season of suffering is indestructible. To
have to endure it in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder.
I was in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers, of the two
sexes, and this compelled repression; yet at times the pain was so
exquisite that I could hardly keep the tears back.

At those times, as the howlings and wailings and shrieking of the
singers, and the ragings and roarings and explosions of the vast
orchestra rose higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and fiercer and
fiercer, I could have cried if I had been alone. Those strangers would
not have been surprised to see a man do such a thing who was being
gradually skinned, but they would have marveled at it here, and made
remarks about it no doubt, whereas there was nothing in the present case
which was an advantage over being skinned.

There was a wait of half an hour at the end of the first act, and I
could have gone out and rested during that time, but I could not trust
myself to do it, for I felt that I should desert to stay out. There was
another wait of half an hour toward nine o'clock, but I had gone through
so much by that time that I had no spirit left, and so had no desire but
to be let alone.

I do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there were like
me, for, indeed, they were not. Whether it was that they naturally
liked that noise, or whether it was that they had learned to like it
by getting used to it, I did not at the time know; but they did like
it--this was plain enough. While it was going on they sat and looked as
rapt and grateful as cats do when one strokes their backs; and whenever
the curtain fell they rose to their feet, in one solid mighty multitude,
and the air was snowed thick with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanes
of applause swept the place. This was not comprehensible to me. Of
course, there were many people there who were not under compulsion to
stay; yet the tiers