room with the witchery
of a summer night. When this had also ceased, she said: "There is
nothing in the least mysterious about the music, as you seem to
imagine. It is not made by fairies or genii, but by good, honest, and
exceedingly clever human hands. We have simply carried the idea of
labor saving by cooperation into our musical service as into everything
else. There are a number of music rooms in the city, perfectly adapted
acoustically to the different sorts of music. These halls are connected
by telephone with all the houses of the city whose people care to pay
the small fee, and there are none, you may be sure, who do not. The
corps of musicians attached to each hall is so large that, although no
individual performer, or group of performers, has more than a brief
part, each day's programme lasts through the twenty-four hours. There
are on that card for to-day, as you will see if you observe closely,
distinct programmes of four of these concerts, each of a different
order of music from the others, being now simultaneously performed, and
any one of the four pieces now going on that you prefer, you can hear
by merely pressing the button which will connect your house-wire with
the hall where it is being rendered. The programmes are so coordinated
that the pieces at any one time simultaneously proceeding in the
different halls usually offer a choice, not only between instrumental
and vocal, and between different sorts of instruments; but also between
different motives from grave to gay, so that all tastes and moods can
be suited."

"It appears to me, Miss Leete," I said, "that if we could have devised
an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes,
perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and
beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of
human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further
improvements."

"I am sure I never could imagine how those among you who depended at
all on music managed to endure the old-fashioned system for providing
it," replied Edith. "Music really worth hearing must have been, I
suppose, wholly out of the reach of the masses, and attainable by the
most favored only occasionally, at great trouble, prodigious expense,
and then for brief periods, arbitrarily fixed by somebody else, and in
connection with all sorts of undesirable circumstances. Your concerts,
for instance, and operas! How perfectly exasperating i