ever--and in conversation he creates the impression that old Issy
Sonata was his first cousin. He can tell you offhand which one of the
Shuberts--Lee or Jake--wrote that Serenade. He speaks of Mozart and
Beethoven in such a way a stranger would probably get the idea that Mote
and Bate used to work for his folks. He can go to a musical show, and
while the performance is going on he can tell everybody in his section
just which composer each song number was stolen from, humming the
original air aloud to show the points of resemblance. He can do this, I
say, and, what is more, he does do it. At the table d'hote place, when
the Neapolitan troubadours come out in their little green jackets and
their wide red sashes he is right there at the middle table, poised and
waiting; and when they put their heads together and lean in toward the
center and sing their national air, Come Into the Garlic, Maud, it is he
who beats time for them with his handy lead-pencil, only pausing
occasionally to point out errors in technic and execution on the part of
the performers. He is that kind of a pest, and you know it.

What you should do under these circumstances, after he has invited you
to come up to his house, would be to look him straight in the eye and
say to him: "Well, old chap, that's awfully kind of you to include me in
your little musical party, and just to show you how much I appreciate it
and how I feel about it here's something for you." And then hit him
right where his hair parts with a cut-glass paperweight or a bronze
clock or a fire-ax or something, after which you should leap madly upon
his prostrate form and dance on his cozy corner with both feet and cave
in his inglenook for him. That is what you should do, but, being a
vacillating person--I am still assuming, you see, that you are
constituted as I am--you weakly surrender and accept the invitation and
promise to be there promptly on time, and he goes away to snare more
victims in order to have enough to make a mess.

And so it befalls at the appointed time that you deck your form in your
after-six-P. M. clothes and go up. On the way you get full and fuller of
dark forebodings at every step; and your worst expectations are realized
as soon as you enter and are relieved of your hat by a colored person in
white gloves, and behold spread before you a great horde of those ladies
and gentlemen whose rapt expressions and general air of eager expectancy
stamp them as true devotees