shing smartness to my toilet--upon
which Bee has fixed her affection, and which she means to get away from
me. I don't know how I came to buy it in the first place. However, I
sha'n't have it long. Bee is bargaining for it--that means that we are
going to Baden-Baden. She is not openly bargaining, for that would let
me know how much she wants it, but she has admired it pointedly. She
tied my veil on for me this morning, and even as I write, she is sewing
a button on my glove. Bee in the politest way possible is going to force
me to give her that tie. I wish she wouldn't, for I really need it, but
I must get all the wear I expect to have out of it in the next two days,
for by the end of the week, if these attentions continue, that Charvet
tie will belong to Bee.
Last night, as soon as we arrived and had our dinner, we went to the
Orangerie. This great park with myriads of walks is one of the most
attractive things about Strasburg. A very good band was playing a Sousa
march as we came in and took our seats at one of the little tables.
But just here let me record something which has surprised me all during
my travels in Europe; and that is the small amount of good music one
hears outside of opera. I have always imagined Germany to be
distinguished equally by her music and her beer. I have not been
disappointed in the beer, for it is there by the tub, but as to the
music, there is not in my opinion in the whole of Germany or Austria one
such as Sousa's, and as to men choruses, not one that I have heard, and
I have followed them closely wherever I heard of their existence, is to
be compared with any of our College Glee Clubs. In my opinion the casual
open-air music of Germany is another of the disappointments of
Europe--to be set down in the same category with the linden trees of
Berlin and the trousers of the French Army.
German music seems to be too universally indulged in to be good. It is
performed with more earnestness than skill and the programme is gone
through with with more fervour than taste. The musicians of a typical
German band dig through the evening's numbers with the same dogged
perseverance and perspiration that they would exercise in tunnelling
through a mountain. In this connection I am not speaking of any of the
trained orchestras, but solely of the band music that one hears all
through the Rhine land. It is only tradition that Germans are the most
musical people in the world, for in my opinion the r
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