, for they are poisons, but to strengthen the organisms with
wholesome tonics,--not undiluted, perhaps, but certainly unadulterated.

O Edmund Sparkler, you builded better than you knew, when you reared
eulogiums upon the woman with no nonsense about her.

CAMILLA'S CONCERT

I, who labor under the suspicion of not knowing the difference between
"Old Hundred" and "Old Dan Tucker,"--I, whose every attempt at music,
though only the humming of a simple household melody, has, from my
earliest childhood, been regarded as premonitory symptom of epilepsy,
or, at the very least, hysterics, to be treated with cold water, the
bellows, and an unmerciful beating between my shoulders,--I, who can
but with much difficulty and many a retrogression make my way among the
olden mazes of tenor, alto, treble, bass, and who stand "clean daft" in
the resounding confusion of andante, soprano, falsetto, palmetto,
pianissimo, akimbo, l'allegro, and il penseroso,--_I_ was bidden to
Camilla's concert, and, like a sheep to slaughter, I went.

He bears a great loss and sorrow who has "no ear for music." Into one
great garden of delights he may not go. There needs no flaming sword
to bar the way, since for him there is no gate called Beautiful which
he should seek to enter. Blunted and stolid he stumbles through life
for whom its harp-strings vainly quiver. Yet, on the other hand, what
does he not gain? He loses the concord of sweet sounds, but he is
spared the discord of harsh noises. For the surges of bewildering
harmony and the depths of dissonant disgust, he stands on the levels of
perpetual peace. You are distressed, because in yonder well-trained
orchestra a single voice is pitched one sixteenth of a note too high.
For me, I lean out of my window on summer nights enraptured over the
organ-man who turns poor lost Lilian Dale round and round with his
inexorable crank. It does not disturb me that his organ wheezes and
sputters and grunts. Indeed, there is for me absolutely no wheeze, no
sputter, no grunt. I only see dark eyes of Italy, her olive face, and
her gemmed and lustrous hair. You mutter maledictions on the infernal
noise and caterwauliug. I hear no caterwauliug, but the river-god of
Arno ripples soft songs in the summertide to the lilies that bend above
him. It is the guitar of the cantatrice that murmurs through the
scented, dewy air,--the cantatrice with the laurel yet green on her
brow, gliding over the molten mo