ctory salaam already protracted beyond the limits of propriety.

CHAPTER I.

The Opera in the Abstract.

"L'Opera toujours
Fait bruit et merveilles:
On y voit les sourds
Boucher leurs oreilles."

BERANGER.

To most of the world (and we say it advisedly,) the opera is a sealed
book. We do not mean a bare representation with its accompanying
screechings, violinings and bass-drummings. Everybody has seen that--But
the race of beings who constitute that remarkable combination; their
feelings, positions, social habits; their relation to one another; what
they say and eat;[a] whether the tenor ever notices as they (the world)
do, the fine legs of the contralto in man's dress, and whether the basso
drinks pale ale or porter; all these things have been hitherto wrapped
in an inscrutable mystery. In regard to mere actors, not singers, this
feeling is confined to children; but the operators of an opera are
essentially esoteric. They are enclosed by a curtain more impenetrable
than the Chinese wall. You may walk all around them; nay, you may even
know an inferior artiste, but there is a line beyond which even the fast
men, with all their impetuosity, are restrained from invading.

[a] We actually knew a man who, when a tenor was spoken of, as having
gone through his _role_, thought that that worthy had been eating his
breakfast.

You walk in the street with a young female, on whom you flatter yourself
you are making an impression; suddenly she cries out, "Oh, there's
Bawlini; do look! dear creature, isn't he?" You may as well turn round
and go home immediately; the rest of your walk won't be worth half the
dream you had the night before. This shows an importance to be attached
to these remarkable persons, which, together with the mystery which
encircles them, is exceedingly aggravating to the feelings of a large
body of respectable citizens. Among those who are mostly afflicted, we
may mention all women, but most especially boarding school misses.
Mothers of families are much perturbed; they wonder why the tenor is so
intimate with the donna, considering they are not married; and fathers
of families wonder "where under the sun that manager gets the money to
pay a tenor twelve hundred dollars a month, when state sixes are so
shockingly depressed." We were going to enumerate those we thought
particularly afflicted by a praiseworthy desire to know something more
of these obscurities, but they are