are making a mistake in not utilizing the human natural
love for excitement and the drama as a subsidiary moral investment.
And, of course, all I have said of theaters applies with equal force to
moving-picture shows.

Chapter 15. Opera and Musical Entertainments

Opera is a form of entertainment which, though very popular in America
and England, does not appeal to me. I know that those who are fond of
music love to attend it, and that the boxes in an opera house are
generally engaged by the fashionable set for the whole season
beforehand. I have seen members of the "four hundred" in their boxes
in a New York opera house; they have been distinguished by their
magnificent toilettes and brilliant jewelry; but I have been thinking
of the Chinese drama, which, like the old Greek play, is also based on
music, and Chinese music with its soft and plaintive airs is a very
different thing from the music of grand opera. Chinese music could not
be represented on Western instruments, the intervals between the notes
being different. Chinese singing is generally "recitative" accompanied
by long notes, broken, or sudden chords from the orchestra. It differs
widely from Western music, but its effects are wonderful. One of our
writers has thus described music he once heard: "Softly, as the murmur
of whispered words; now loud and soft together, like the patter of
pearls and pearlets dropping upon a marble dish. Or liquid, like the
warbling of the mango-bird in the bush; trickling like the streamlet on
its downward course. And then like the torrent, stilled by the grip of
frost, so for a moment was the music lulled, in a passion too deep for
words." That this famous description of the effects of music which I
have borrowed from Mr. Dyer Ball's "Things Chinese" is not exaggerated,
anyone who knows China may confirm by personal observation of the keen
enjoyment an unlearned, common day laborer will find in playing a
single lute all by himself for hours beneath the moon on a warm summer
evening, with no one listening but the trees and the flitting insects;
but it requires a practised ear to appreciate singing and a good voice.
On one occasion I went to an opera house in London to hear the
world-renowned Madame Patti. The place was so crowded, and the
atmosphere so close, that I felt very uncomfortable and I am ashamed to
acknowledge that I had to leave before she had finished. If I had been
educated to appreciate that sort