s
urged upon him--well, he got what he wanted much more quickly from music;
any sort of music, from an orchestra to a barrel organ. He needed only
the spark, the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of
his senses, and he could make plots and pictures enough of his own. It
was equally true that he was not stage-struck--not, at any rate, in the
usual acceptation of that expression. He had no desire to become an
actor, any more than he had to become a musician. He felt no necessity to
do any of these things; what he wanted was to see, to be in the
atmosphere, float on the wave of it, to be carried out, blue league after
blue league, away from everything.

After a night behind the scenes, Paul found the school-room more than
ever repulsive; the bare floors and naked walls; the prosy men who never
wore frock coats, or violets in their buttonholes; the women with their
dull gowns, shrill voices, and pitiful seriousness about prepositions
that govern the dative. He could not bear to have the other pupils think,
for a moment, that he took these people seriously; he must convey to
them that he considered it all trivial, and was there only by way of a
joke, anyway. He had autograph pictures of all the members of the stock
company which he showed his classmates, telling them the most incredible
stories of his familiarity with these people, of his acquaintance with
the soloists who came to Carnegie Hall, his suppers with them and the
flowers he sent them. When these stories lost their effect, and his
audience grew listless, he would bid all the boys good-bye, announcing
that he was going to travel for awhile; going to Naples, to California,
to Egypt. Then, next Monday, he would slip back, conscious and nervously
smiling; his sister was ill, and he would have to defer his voyage until
spring.

Matters went steadily worse with Paul at school. In the itch to let his
instructors know how heartily he despised them, and how thoroughly he was
appreciated elsewhere, he mentioned once or twice that he had no time to
fool with theorems; adding--with a twitch of the eyebrows and a touch of
that nervous bravado which so perplexed them--that he was helping the
people down at the stock company; they were old friends of his.

The upshot of the matter was, that the Principal went to Paul's father,
and Paul was taken out of school and put to work. The manager at Carnegie
Hall was told to get another usher in his stead; the doorke