ed by an intense, overpowering sense of
sadness, that in my then sickly, nervous state produced a mental
condition adequately to describe which would take a great physiologist.
I could not sleep, I lost my spirits, my favorite studies became
distasteful to me, and I spent my time wandering aimlessly about Paris
and its environs. During that long period of suffering, I can only
recall four occasions on which I slept, and then it was the heavy,
death-like sleep produced by complete physical exhaustion. These were
one night when I had thrown myself down on some sheaves in a field near
Ville-Juif; one day in a meadow in the neighborhood of Sceaux; once on
the snow on the banks of the frozen Seine, near Neuilly; and lastly, on
a table in the Cafe du Cardinal at the corner of the Boulevard des
Italiens and the Rue Richelieu, where I slept for five hours, to the
terror of the _garcons_, who thought I was dead and were afraid to
come near me.

It was on my return from one of these wanderings, in which I must have
seemed like one seeking his soul, that my eyes fell on Moore's 'Irish
Melodies,' lying open on my table at the song beginning "When he who
adores thee." I seized my pen, and then and there wrote the music to
that heart-rending farewell, which is published at the end of my
collection of songs, 'Irlande,' under the title of 'Elegie.' This is the
only occasion on which I have been able to vent any strong feeling in
music while still under its influence. And I think that I have rarely
reached such intense truth of musical expression, combined with so much
realistic power of harmony.

ON THEATRICAL MANAGERS IN RELATION TO ART

From the 'Autobiography'

I have often wondered why theatrical managers everywhere have such a
marked predilection for what genuine artists, cultivated minds, and even
a certain section of the public itself persist in regarding as very poor
manufacture, short-lived productions, the handiwork of which is as
valueless as the raw material itself. Not as though platitudes always
succeeded better than good works; indeed, the contrary is often the
case. Neither is it that careful compositions entail more expense than
"shoddy." It is often just the other way. Perhaps it arises simply from
the fact that the good works demand the care, study, attention, and, in
certain cases, even the mind, talent, and inspiration of every one in
the theatre, from the manager down to the prompter. The others, on the
con