n;
Tobacco and chime of voices wreathing out of the gloom,
Out of the lilied dusk at the firelight's invitation.
Then, in the muffled hour, one, strange and gracious and sad,
Moves from the phantom hearth, and, with infinite delicacies,
Looses his lissome hands along the murmurous keys._

_Valse, mazurka, and nocturne, prelude and polonaise
Clamour and wander and wail on the opiate air,
Piercing our hearts with echo of passionate days,
Peopling a top front lodging with shapes of care.
And as our souls, uncovered, would shamefully hide away,
The radiant hands light up the enchanted gloom
With the pure flame of life from the shadowless tomb._

A MUSICAL NIGHT

THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES

For a few months of the year London is the richest of all cities in the
matter of music; but it is only for a few months. From the end of August
to the end of October we have Sir Henry Wood's Promenade Concerts. From
the end of May to mid-July we have the Grand Season at Covent Garden.
Interspersed between these, at intervals all too rare, we have
individual concerts at the Queen's, Steinway, and AEolian Halls;
sometimes an Autumn Season of opera or Russian ballet; and the Saturday
and Sunday concerts, the former at the Albert and Queen's Halls, and the
latter, under the auspices of the Sunday League, at pretty well every
theatre and music-hall in London and the suburbs.

There are, however, long spells of emptiness when nothing or little is
doing in musical London, and that little hardly ever at night, though
Sir Thomas Beecham, the greatest philanthropist of his time, is doing
splendid work in feeding the hungry music-lover.

I should like, just here, to enter a protest against the practice
prevalent among our best soloists of giving their concerts in the
afternoons. Does it not occur to MM. Pachmann, Paderewski, Backhaus,
Mischa Elman, Hambourg, and others that there are thousands of
music-lovers in London who are never free at afternoons, and cannot turn
their little world upside down in order to snatch an afternoon even for
something so compelling as their recitals? Continually London gives you
these empty evenings. You do not want theatre or vaudeville; you want
music. And it is not to be had at any price; though when it is to be had
it is very well worth having.

No artist of any kind in music--singer, pianist, violinist,
conductor--considers himself