pompous combinations of Baireuth, and the Tone school, instead of the
old sweet strains of melody that went straight and clear to the ear and
the heart of man. Sometimes my enemies write in their journals that I
sing as if I were a Tuscan peasant strolling through his corn--how
proud they make me! But they do not mean to do so. I will not twist and
emphasise. I trust to melody. I was taught music in its own country, and
I will not sin against the canons of the Italians. They are right.
Rhetoric is one thing, and song is another. Why confuse the two?
Simplicity is the soul of great music; as it is the mark of great
passion. Ornament is out of place in melody which represents single
emotions at their height, be they joy, or fear, or hate, or love, or
shame, or vengeance, or whatsoever they will. Music is not a science any
more than poetry is. It is a sublime instinct, like genius of all kinds.
I sing as naturally as other men speak; let me remain natural"----

* * *

Childhood goes with us like an echo always, a refrain to the ballad of
our life. One always wants one's cradle-air.

* * *

"The poor you have always with you," she said to a bevy of great ladies
once. "Christ said so. You profess to follow Christ. How have you the
poor with you? The back of their garret, the roof of their hovel,
touches the wall of your palace, and the wall is thick. You have
dissipations, spectacles, diversions that you call charities; you have a
tombola for a famine, you have a dramatic performance for a flood, you
have a concert for a fire, you have a fancy fair for a leprosy. Do you
never think how horrible it is, that mockery of woe? Do you ever wonder
at revolutions? Why do you not say honestly that you care nothing? You
do care nothing. The poor might forgive the avowal of indifference; they
will never forgive the insult of affected pity."

* * *

"Why do you go to such a place?" he asked her as she stood on the
staircase.

"There are poor there, and great misery," she answered him reluctantly;
she did not care to speak of these things at any time.

"And what good will you do? You will be cheated and robbed, and even if
you are not, you should know that political science has found that
private charity is the hotbed of all idleness."

"When political science has advanced enough to prevent poverty, it may
have the right to prevent charity too," she answered him, with a