y right to ask of his audience anything more than
opportunity,--the externals of attention. All the rest is his own
look-out. If you prepossess your mind with a theme, you do not give
him an even chance. You must offer him in the beginning a tabula
rasa,--a fair field, and then it is his business to go in and win your
attention; and if he cannot, let him pay the costs, for the fault is
his own.

This also is torture, but its name is Zoar, a little one.

There is yet another way. You may go with one or many who believe in
individuality. They go to the concert for love of music,--negatively
for its rest and refreshment, positively for its embodied delights.
They take you for your enjoyment, which they permit you to compass
after your own fashion. They force from you no comment. They demand
no criticism. They do not require censure as your certificate of
taste. They do not trouble themselves with your demeanor. If you
choose to talk in the pauses, they are receptive and cordial. If you
choose to be silent, it is just as well. If you go to sleep, they will
not mind,--unless, under the spell of the genius of the place, your
sleep becomes vocal, and you involuntarily join the concert in the
undesirable role of De Trop. If you go into raptures, it is all the
same; you are not watched and made a note of. They leave you at the
top of your bent. Whether you shall be amused, delighted, or
disgusted, they respect your decisions and allow you to remain free.

How did I go to my concert? Can I tell for the eyes that made "a
sunshine in the shady place"? Was I not veiled with the beautiful
hair, and blinded with the lily's white splendor? So went I with the
Fairy Queen in her golden coach drawn by six white mice, and, behold, I
was in Camilla's concert-room.

It is to be a fiddle affair. Now I am free to say, if there is
anything I hate, it is a fiddle. Hide it away under as many Italian
coatings as you choose, viol, violin, viola, violone, violoncello,
violoncellettissimo, at bottom it is all one, a fiddle; in its best
estate, a whirligig, without dignity, sentiment, or power; and at worst
a rubbing, rasping, squeaking, woollen, noisy nuisance that it sets
teeth on edge to think of. I shudder at the mere memory of the
reluctant bow dragging its slow length across the whining strings. And
here I am, in my sober senses, come to hear a fiddle!

But it is Camilla's. Do you remember a little girl who, a few year