ly taking up a collection. Many a skinny old being in our
neighborhood was the happier and the restfuler for her coming.

In that large audience, that night, there were eight very conspicuous
people. These were ladies who had their hats or bonnets on. What a
blessed thing it would be if a lady could make herself conspicuous in
our theaters by wearing her hat.

It is not usual in Europe to allow ladies and gentlemen to take bonnets,
hats, overcoats, canes, or umbrellas into the auditorium, but in
Mannheim this rule was not enforced because the audiences were largely
made up of people from a distance, and among these were always a few
timid ladies who were afraid that if they had to go into an anteroom to
get their things when the play was over, they would miss their train.
But the great mass of those who came from a distance always ran the risk
and took the chances, preferring the loss of a train to a breach of good
manners and the discomfort of being unpleasantly conspicuous during a
stretch of three or four hours.

CHAPTER X

[How Wagner Operas Bang Along]

Three or four hours. That is a long time to sit in one place, whether
one be conspicuous or not, yet some of Wagner's operas bang along for
six whole hours on a stretch! But the people sit there and enjoy it all,
and wish it would last longer. A German lady in Munich told me that a
person could not like Wagner's music at first, but must go through the
deliberate process of learning to like it--then he would have his sure
reward; for when he had learned to like it he would hunger for it and
never be able to get enough of it. She said that six hours of Wagner was
by no means too much. She said that this composer had made a complete
revolution in music and was burying the old masters one by one. And
she said that Wagner's operas differed from all others in one notable
respect, and that was that they were not merely spotted with music here
and there, but were ALL music, from the first strain to the last. This
surprised me. I said I had attended one of his insurrections, and found
hardly ANY music in it except the Wedding Chorus. She said "Lohengrin"
was noisier than Wagner's other operas, but that if I would keep on
going to see it I would find by and by that it was all music, and
therefore would then enjoy it. I COULD have said, "But would you advise
a person to deliberately practice having a toothache in the pit of his
stomach for a couple of years in o