er sight."

"Do you think so, Florence?" replied Marion Sanderson. "To me it is just
like everything else Chicago produces, stupendous and gaudy. They have
tried to make an opera house, a concert hall and a convention room, and,
consequently, have produced a building which is neither fish, flesh, nor
fowl."

"What do you mean?" asked Florence.

"I mean that as an opera house it is a woful failure. They have shoved
two tiers of boxes off at the sides and have given the entire house up
to seats; they have put in a hideous organ where the proscenium boxes
ought to be, and have invented all manner of machines for lowering the
roof and shutting off the galleries; and as for those miserable little
columns holding up that balcony, they are simply ridiculous."

"Marion very seldom admires home productions," Roswell Sanderson
interposed.

"That is just the trouble," added Florence. "For my part I admire the
progressive spirit which prompted the architect to depart from
conventional ideas. If there are no boxes at the back, every one can see
and hear, and I think that mass of people rising gently from the stage
one of the most superb sights one could wish to see. The effects of the
Paris and Vienna opera houses are not to be compared to it."

"Don't be so disagreeably contradictory to all I say," retorted Marion.

"I sha'n't for the present, dear, because I wish to hear some of that
glorious music. You must not take what I say seriously."

Then they were silent, for, unconsciously, they were brought under the
spell of the great tenor's art.

"What a divine voice that man has," said Florence, as the curtain slowly
fell after the first act. "I fairly held my breath during that high _C_.
Mr. Sedger, please applaud, and help bring him out. There he comes!
Bravo, bravo, Tamagno!"

"I did the best I could, Miss Moreland," Walter Sedger said, after the
applause of two recalls had died away. "But do you really enjoy this
music so much? For my part I prefer opera-bouffe."

"I admire your frankness, Mr. Sedger," she replied. "There are so many
people who adore Wagner because he is the fashion, and sneer at Verdi
and the Italian school, when, if the truth were known, they have not the
slightest conception of the good qualities of either. For my part I like
any music from a hurdy-gurdy up, though an extended term of suffering
under a German professor has finally produced a taste for such music as
Verdi has given us in 'Otello',