moral
verdicts and labelling these victors or victims of life with tags
marking their destinations in the next world. He who gets into another's
heart with understanding, will find it impossible to indulge in
wholesale blame--"_tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner_." So, without
pretending to have comprehended any of these human hearts altogether, I
have learned enough to lean almost always a little toward the defence,
and still more nearly always toward the praise of the woman in the case.
And yet, the whole effort and viewpoint of the work will be found, I
think, to be based upon a deep belief that one love is better than two,
and that earnestness and honesty and altruism are more blessed and
blissful, even with poverty and suffering, than any wealth of money, or
of fame, or of amorous experience.

As a last chapter to this series of "true stories," I have ventured to
sum up the conclusions, to which the study of all these affairs has
compelled me, and to state a general opinion as to the effect of music
on character. It might have been more exciting to some readers, if I
had started out with a hard and fast theory, and then discarded or
warped everything contradictory to it, but it would have been a
dishonest procedure for one who believes that musicians are neither
saints of exaltation nor fiends of lawless ecstasy; but only ordinary
clay ovens of fire and ashes like the rest of us. He who generalises is
lost, and yet I make bold to believe that the conclusion of this book is
true and reasonable and in accordance with such evidence as could be
collected.

And now after this before-the-curtain lecture, it is high time, as
Artemus would say, to "rise the curting."

CHAPTER II.

THE ANCIENTS

The very origins and traditions of the trade of music seem to enforce a
certain versatility of emotion and experience. Apollo, the particular
god of music, was not much of a lover, and what few affairs he had were
hardly happy; his suit was either declined with thanks, or, if accepted,
ended in the death of the lady; as for himself--being a god, he was
denied the comfortable convenience of suicide. Daphne, as every one
knows, took to a tree to escape his attentions; and Coronis, as so many
another woman, was soon blase of divine courtship, and, for variety,
turned her eyes elsewhere. She was punished with death indeed; but her
son was Aesculapius. Which explains the medicinal value music has always
claimed.

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