ybody sings, almost everybody plays some instrument, and
from the youngest to the oldest everybody understands music; at least
that is the impression you carry away with you from the land of Bach,
Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Brahms, and Beethoven, and Wagner, and I
might fill the page with the others.

You are at least on the ramparts of Paradise, in the Thomas Kirche in
Leipsic at the weekly Saturday concert of the scholars of the Thomas
Schule. The worldliness is melted out of you, as you sit in the cool,
quiet church with the sunlight slanting in upon you, and the
atmosphere alive with sweet sounds. And this is only one of hundreds
of such experiences all over Germany. At the Kreuz Kirche in Dresden,
at the great Dom church in Berlin at Easter time, for the asking you
may have the oil and wine of music's Good Samaritan poured upon the
wounds of those sore-pressed travellers, your hopes and ideals, your
dreams and ambitions, that have fallen among thieves, on the long,
long way from Jericho to Jerusalem.

It is, I must admit, a drab and dreary crowd to look at, these Germans
at the theatre, at the opera, in the concert halls. They do not dress,
or if they are women undress, for their music as do we; their music
dresses for them. They come, most of them, in the clothes that they
have worn all day, each quidlibet induitus. They have many of them a
meal of meat, bread, and beer during the long pause between two of the
acts, always provided for this purpose. Some of them bring little bags
with their own provisions, and only buy a glass of beer. They are
solemnly attentive, an educated and experienced audience there for a
purpose, and not to be trifled with, the most competently critical
audience in the world. I wonder as I look at them whether the fact
that they have no backs to their heads, emphasized nowadays by the
fact that many men wear their hair clipped close to the head, and no
chins (the lack of chins in Germany is almost a national peculiarity)
has any physiological or psychological relation to their prowess in,
and love of, and critical appreciation of, the more nebulous arts:
music, poetry, philosophy, and the serious drama.

They are as adamant in their observance of the rules in such matters.
More than once I arrived at the opera a few minutes late, once four
minutes late, the doors are closed and guarded, and I listen to the
overture from the outside. At a concert led by the famous von Buelow
half a dozen