expounders, praying
that this poisonous nonsense will not reach us in America. But it will.

The charm of this little city is the high price charged for everything.
A stranger is "spotted" at once and he is the prey of the townspeople.
Beer, carriages, food, pictures, music, busts, books, rooms, nothing is
cheap. I've been all over, saw Wagner's tomb, looked at the outside of
_Wahnfried_ and the inside of the theater. I have seen Siegfried
Wagner--who can't conduct one-quarter as well as our own Walter
Damrosch--walking up and down the streets, a tin demi-god, a reduced
octavo edition of his father bound in cheap calf. Worse still, I have
heard the young man try to conduct, try to hold that mighty Bayreuth
orchestra in leash, and with painful results. Not one firm, clanging
chord could he extort; all were more or less arpeggioed, and as for
climax--there was none.

I have sat in Sammett's garden, which was once Angermann's, famous for
its company, kings, composers, poets, wits, and critics, all mingling
there in discordant harmony. Now it is overrun by Cook's tourists in
bicycle costumes, irreverent, chattering, idle, and foolish. Even Wagner
has grown gray and the _Ring_ sounded antique to me, so strong were the
disturbing influences of my environment.

The bad singing by ancient Teutons--for the most part--was to blame for
this. Certainly when Walhall had succumbed to the flames and the
primordial Ash-Tree sunk in the lapping waters of the treacherous Rhine,
I felt that the end of the universe was at hand and it was with a sob I
saw outside in the soft, summer-sky, riding gallantly in the blue, the
full moon. It was the only young thing in the world at that moment, this
burnt-out servant planet of ours, and I gazed at it long and fondly, for
it recalled the romance of my student years, my love of Schumann's
poetic music and other illusions of a vanished past. In a word, I had
again surrendered to the sentimental spell of Germany, Germany by night,
and with my heart full I descended from the terrace, walked slowly down
the arbored avenue to Sammett's garden and there sat, mused and--smoked
my Yankee pipe. I realize that I am, indeed, an old man ready for that
shelf the youngsters provide for the superannuated and those who
disagree with them.

I had all but forgotten the performances. They were, as I declared at
the outset, far from perfect, far from satisfactory. The _Ring_ was
depressing. Rosa Sucher, who visite