iar acoustical properties of public buildings. We
manage, however, to hear a good deal of both young and middle-aged
conversation, of the following improving type.

RURAL PERSON. "I've heard most everybody that's sung in our Philadelphy
opera house, and some of 'em are pretty hard to beat. NILSSON may beat
'em, you know. Mind, now, I don't say she won't, but she's got a mighty
hard row to hoe."

CRITIC. _(Who sent for seats for his eight sisters and their
friends--but who did not get them.)_ "There comes the Scandinavian
Society--fifty Irishmen at fifty cents a head. Did you see the flowers
piled up in the lobby? MAX paid seven hundred dollars for the lot."

YOUNG MAN. "Dearest! I wish you wouldn't look at that fellow across the
way. You know how your own darling loves you, and--"

YOUNG LADY. "Hush! Don't bother. Here comes VIEUXTEMPS."

VIEUXTEMPS plays, and the audience listens with the air of people who
are dreadfully bored, but are afraid to show it. He disappears with an
amount of applause carefully graduated so as to express enthusiasm
without the desire for hearing him again. The Rural Person remarks that
"he doesn't think much of fiddlers anyhow. Give him a trombone, or a
banjo, for his money."

MR. WEHLI then trifles with the piano. Him, too, the audience politely
endure, but plainly do not appreciate. They have come to hear NILSSON,
and feel outraged at having to hear anybody else. A cornet solo by the
Angel GABRIEL himself would be secretly regarded as undoubtedly
artistic, but certainly a little out of place.

CHORUS OF RIVAL PIANO-MAKERS. "What a wretched instrument that poor
fellow is made to play upon. Nobody can produce any effect on a STEINWAY
piano. It's good for nothing but for boarding-school practice."

CRITIC, (who knows Mr. STEINWAY.) "Anybody can please people by playing
on a STEINWAY. I defy WEHLI or any other man to play badly on such a
superb instrument as that."

YOUNG MAN. "Dearest! Do you remember the day when you gave me one of
your hair-pins? I have worn it next my--"

YOUNG LADY. "Oh, don't bother. NILSSON is just going to sing."

And she does sing, with that voice so matchless in its perfect purity,
that even the disappointed critic grows uneasy as he tries in vain to
find some reasonable fault with it. She ceases, and amid wild cheers
from the paying part of the audience, silent approval from the
deadheads, and shouts of "Hooroo!" and "Begorra!" from the Scandinavian
Soci