he had found the Moses who would
lead the people out of captivity, into the Promised Land of Celestial
Art.

Nietzsche came and heard the Wagnerian music and was caught as flotsam
in its whirling eddies. He read everything that Wagner had written, and
having come within the gracious sunshine of the great man's presence, he
rushed to his garret and in white heat wrote the most appreciative
criticism of Wagner and his work that has ever, even yet, been penned.
This booklet, "Wagner at Bayreuth," is a masterpiece of insight and
erudition, written by a man of imagination, who saw and felt, and knew
how to mold his feelings into words--words that burn. It is a rhapsody
of appreciation.

Art is more a matter of heart than of head.

The book had a wide circulation, helped on, they do say, by the Master
himself, who confessed that in the main the work rang true.

The publication of the book sort of linked these two men, Wagner and
Nietzsche. The disciple sat at the feet of the elder man, and vowed he
would be in literature what Wagner was in music. He gazed on him, fed on
him, quoted him, waiting in patience for the pearls of thought.

Now Wagner was a natural man--a natural son of God. He had the desires,
appetites and ambitions of a man. If he voiced great thoughts and wrote
great scores, he did these things in a mood--and never knew how. At
times he was coarse, perverse, irritable.

The awful, serious, sober ways of Nietzsche began to pall on Wagner--he
would run away when he saw him coming, for Nietzsche had begun to give
advice about how Wagner should regenerate the race, and also conduct
himself. Now Richard Wagner had no intention of setting the world
straight--he wanted to express himself, that was all, and to make enough
money so he could be free to come and go as he chose.

Once, at a picnic, Wagner climbed a tree and cawed like a crow; then
hooted like an owl; he ate tarts out of a tin dish with a knife; a
little later he stood on his head and yelled like a Congo chief. When
Nietzsche tearfully interposed, Wagner told him to go and get
married--marry the first woman who was fool enough to have him--she
would relieve him of some of his silliness.

Shortly after this, the great Wagner festival came on, and Bayreuth was
filled with visitors who had read Nietzsche's book, and bought
excursion-tickets to Bayreuth.

Wagner was over his ears in work--an orchestra of three hundred players
to manage, new music to