women come in after the music has begun, rustling,
sibilant, and excited. The music stops, the great conductor turns to
glare at them, and, referring to the geese which are said to have
saved Rome by their hissing, thunders: "Hier ist kein Capitol zu
retten!"

There are some forty thousand professional musicians in Germany. The
town council of Berlin is now discussing gravely the sum to be
allotted to the support of the Symphony Orchestra, and Charlottenburg
is building an opera house of its own, and Spandau a theatre; and
there has just been formed in Berlin a "Society of the German
Artistes' Theatre," with a capital of $200,000, which is a project
along the general lines of the Comedie Francaise. The discussions and
arguments relating to these municipal expenditures, as I read them in
the newspapers, are all based upon the assumption that the people have
a right to good and cheap music, just as they have a right to good and
cheap beer and bread.

At Duesseldorf one of the theatres, managed by a woman, and supported
by the best people in the town, is not only a playhouse, but a school
for actors, and a proving-ground for the drama. It is a treat indeed
to attend the performances there. We have tried similar things in
America, but with sad results. Fifty millionaires, no one of whom had
ever read the text of a serious play in his life, build a temple for
the drama, but there are no plays, no actors, no audience, nothing is
accomplished. There is no critical body of real lovers of the drama,
and there are no cheap seats, and there is still that fatuous notion
that exclusiveness, except in the trifling matter of physical
propinquity, can be bought with dollars.

The only impenetrably exclusive thing in the world is intellect, he is
the only aristocrat left in these democratic days, and we are not
devoting much attention as yet to his breeding. We do not realize that
the only valuable democrat must be an aristocrat. "Culture seeks to do
away with classes and sects; to make the best that has been thought
and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an
atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it
uses them itself, freely; nourished and not bound by them. This is the
social idea; and the men of culture are the true apostles of
equality."

In Germany there are more men of culture per thousand of the
population than in any other land, but they rule the country not by
"sweetness