reason, then,
Frankfurt was assembled to hear Gluck's music and remember him; and,
as I looked at these living Germans honoring their classics, I thought
it was truly a splendid people that not only possessed but practically
nourished themselves with these masterpieces of their great dead.

But this was not all. This was Germany looking at its Past. In the
Frankfurt opera house I also learned one of the ways in which Germany
attends to its Future. It was on a Sunday afternoon. As I crossed the
open space toward the opera house it seemed as though I were the only
grown person bound there. Children by threes and fours, and in little
groups, were streaming from every quarter, entering every door,
tripping up the wide, handsome stairs, filling all the seats--boys and
girls; it was like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. After a few minutes I
found that I was indeed almost alone amid a rippling sea of
children--nearly two thousand, as I later learned. In the boxes here
and there was a parent or two with a family party, and dotted about
the house a few scattered older heads among the young ones.

The overture began. "Hush!" went several little voices; the sprightly,
expectant Babel fell to silence; they listened like a congregation in
church.

Then the curtain rose. It was a gay old opera, tuneful, full of
boisterous, innocent comedy and simple sentiment. Not Gluck this time;
Gluck would have been a trifle severe for their young understandings.
The enthusiasm and the attention of these boys and girls, with their
clapping of hands and their laughter, soon affected the spirits of the
singers as a radiant day in spring; it affected me. I envied the happy
parents who had their children round them; it was like some sort of
wonderful April light. Beneath it the quaint, sweet old opera shone like
a fruit tree in blossom. The actors became as children again themselves;
so did the fiddlers; so did the conductor. I doubt if that little old
opera, _Czaar und Zimmermann_, had ever felt younger in its life; and I
thought if the spirit of Goethe were watching Frankfurt, his city,
to-day, it would add a new happiness to a moment of his Eternity.

Between the acts I was full of questions. What occasion was this? I
read the program, wherein was set forth a most interesting account of
the composer--his character, life and adventures, with a historic
account also of Peter the Great, the hero of the opera; but nothing
about the occasion. So in the