ea of
labor saving by cooperation into our musical service as into
everything else. There are a number of music rooms in the city,
perfectly adapted acoustically to the different sorts of music. These
halls are connected by telephone with all the houses of the city whose
people care to pay the small fee, and there are none, you may be sure,
who do not. The corps of musicians attached to each hall is so large
that, although no individual performer, or group of performers, has
more than a brief part, each day's programme lasts through the
twenty-four hours. There are on that card for to-day, as you will see
if you observe closely, distinct programmes of four of these concerts,
each of a different order of music from the others, being now
simultaneously performed, and any one of the four pieces now going on
that you prefer, you can hear by merely pressing the button which will
connect your house-wire with the hall where it is being rendered. The
programmes are so coordinated that the pieces at any one time
simultaneously proceeding in the different halls usually offer a
choice, not only between instrumental and vocal, and between different
sorts of instruments; but also between different motives from grave to
gay, so that all tastes and moods can be suited."

"It appears to me, Miss Leete," I said, "that if we could have devised
an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes,
perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and
beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of
human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further
improvements."

"I am sure I never could imagine how those among you who depended at
all on music managed to endure the old-fashioned system for providing
it," replied Edith. "Music really worth hearing must have been, I
suppose, wholly out of the reach of the masses, and attainable by the
most favored only occasionally, at great trouble, prodigious expense,
and then for brief periods, arbitrarily fixed by somebody else, and in
connection with all sorts of undesirable circumstances. Your concerts,
for instance, and operas! How perfectly exasperating it must have
been, for the sake of a piece or two of music that suited you, to have
to sit for hours listening to what you did not care for! Now, at a
dinner one can skip the courses one does not care for. Who would ever
dine, however hungry, if required to eat everything brought on th