s, built solidly up with curious old houses that are a
dream of the Middle Ages, and presently you come to the main object
of your trip--Lake Annecy. It is a revelation. It is a miracle.
It brings the tears to a body's eyes. It is so enchanting. That is
to say, it affects you just as all other things that you instantly
recognize as perfect affect you--perfect music, perfect eloquence,
perfect art, perfect joy, perfect grief.

He was getting back into his old descriptive swing, but his dislike for
travel was against him, and he found writing the letters hard. From
Bayreuth he wrote "At the Shrine of St. Wagner," one of the best
descriptions of that great musical festival that has been put into words.
He paid full tribute to the performance, also to the Wagner devotion,
confessing its genuineness.

This opera of "Tristan and Isolde" last night broke the hearts of
all witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some, and have
heard of many, who could not sleep after it, but cried the night
away. I feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the
one sane person in the community of the mad; sometimes I feel like
the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in
the college of the learned, and always during service I feel like a
heretic in heaven.

He tells how he really enjoyed two of the operas, and rejoiced in
supposing that his musical regeneration was accomplished and perfected;
but alas! he was informed by experts that those particular events were
not real music at all. Then he says:

Well, I ought to have recognized the sign the old, sure sign that
has never failed me in matters of art. Whenever I enjoy anything in
art it means that it is mighty poor. The private knowledge of this
fact has saved me from going to pieces with enthusiasm in front of
many and many a chromo. However, my base instinct does bring me
profit sometimes; I was the only man out of 3,200 who got his money
back on those two operas.

His third letter was from Marienbad, in Bohemia, another
"health-factory," as he calls it, and is of the same general character as
those preceding. In his fourth letter he told how he himself took charge
of the family fortunes and became courier from Aix to Bayreuth. It is a
very delightful letter, most of it, and probably not greatly burlesqued
or exaggerated in its details. It is included now in the "C