them. High class moods come to all of us. The difference between
the really high-class man and us commonplace, workaday men is the
difference between, say, the eagle and the barnyard chicken. I am
the barnyard chicken. I have my wings. There are ecstatic moments
when I feel I want to spurn the sordid earth and soar into the realms
of art. I do fly a little, but my body is heavy, and I only get as
far as the fence. After a while I find it lonesome on the fence, and
I hop down again among my fellows.

   Listening to Wagner, during such temporary Philistinic mood, my sense
of fair play is outraged. A lone, lorn woman stands upon the stage
trying to make herself heard. She has to do this sort of thing for
her living; maybe an invalid mother, younger brothers and sisters are
dependent upon her. One hundred and forty men, all armed with
powerful instruments, well-organised, and most of them looking well-
fed, combine to make it impossible for a single note of that poor
woman's voice to be heard above their din. I see her standing there,
opening and shutting her mouth, getting redder and redder in the
face. She is singing, one feels sure of it; one could hear her if
only those one hundred and forty men would ease up for a minute. She
makes one mighty, supreme effort; above the banging of the drums, the
blare of the trumpets, the shrieking of the strings, that last
despairing note is distinctly heard.

   She has won, but the victory has cost her dear. She sinks down
fainting on the stage and is carried off by supers. Chivalrous
indignation has made it difficult for me to keep my seat watching the
unequal contest. My instinct was to leap the barrier, hurl the bald-
headed chief of her enemies from his high chair, and lay about me
with the trombone or the clarionet—whichever might have come the
easier to my snatch.

   "You cowardly lot of bullies," I have wanted to cry, "are you not
ashamed of yourselves? A hundred and forty of you against one, and
that one a still beautiful and, comparatively speaking, young lady.
Be quiet for a minute—can't you? Give the poor girl a chance."

   A lady of my acquaintance says that sitting out a Wagnerian opera
seems to her like listening to a singer accompanied by four
orchestras playing different tunes at the same time. As I have said,

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