d felt more expansively peaceful than she ever had been in the stress
of Walter Babson.

"Straight, now, little sister. Own up. Don't you get more fun out of
hearing Raymond Hitchcock sing than you do out of a bunch of fiddles and
flutes fighting out a piece by Vaugner like they was Kilkenny cats?
'Fess up, now; don't you get more downright amusement?"

"Well, maybe I do, sometimes; but that doesn't mean that all this cheap
musical comedy music is as good as opera, and so on, if we had our--had
musical educations--"

"Oh yes; that's what they all say! But I notice that Hitchcock and
George M. Cohan go on drawing big audiences every night--yes, and the
swellest, best-dressed, smartest people in New York and Brooklyn,
too--it's in the gallery at the opera that you find all these Wops and
Swedes and Lord knows what-all. And when a bunch of people are out at a
lake, say, you don't ever catch 'em singing Vaugner or Lits or Gryge or
any of them guys. If they don't sing, 'In the Good Old Summer-Time,'
it's 'Old Black Joe,' or 'Nelly Was a Lady,' or something that's really
got some _melody_ to it."

The neophyte was lured from her new-won altar. Cold to her knees was the
barren stone of the shrine; and she feebly recanted, "Yes, that's so."

Mr. Schwirtz cheerfully took out a cigar, smelled it, bit it,
luxuriously removed the band, requested permission to smoke, lighted the
cigar without waiting for an answer to that request, sighed happily, and
dived again:

"Not that I'm knocking the high-brows, y' understand. This dress-suit
music is all right for them that likes it. But what I object to is their
trying to stuff it down _my_ throat! I let 'em alone, and if I want to
be a poor old low-brow and like reg'lar music, I don't see where they
get off to be telling me I got to go to concerts. Honest now, ain't that
the truth?"

"Oh yes, _that_ way--"

"All these here critics telling what low-brows us American business men
are! Just between you and I, I bet I knock down more good, big, round,
iron men every week than nine-tenths of these high-brow fiddlers--yes,
and college professors and authors, too!"

"Yes, but you shouldn't make money your standard," said Una, in company
with the invisible chorus of Mamie Magen and Walter Babson.

"Well, then, what _are_ you going to make a standard?" asked Mr.
Schwirtz, triumphantly.

"Well--" said Una.

"Understan' me; I'm a high-brow myself some ways. I never could stand
these c