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“I wish the Doctor would come down,” said Mrs. Smithers, anxiously.

“Yes,” put in the School-master; “there seems to be madness in our midst.”

“Well, what can you expect of a Cuban, anyhow?” queried the Idiot. “The Cuban, like the Spaniard or the Italian or the African, hasn’t the vigor which is necessary for the proper comprehension and rendering of Wagner’s music. He is by nature slow and indolent. If it were easier for a Spaniard to hop than to walk, he’d hop, and rest his other leg. I’ve known Italians whose diet was entirely confined to liquids, because they were too tired to masticate solids. It is the ease with which it can be absorbed that makes macaroni the favorite dish of the Italians, and the fondness of all Latin races for wines is entirely due, I think, to the fact that wine can be swallowed without chewing. This indolence affects also their language. The Italian and the Spaniard speak the language that comes easy–that is soft and dreamy; while the Germans and Russians, stronger, more energetic, indulge in a speech that even to us, who are people of an average amount of energy, is sometimes appalling in the severity of the strain it puts upon the tongue. So, while I do not wonder that your Cuban pianist showed woful defects in his use of the pedals, I do wonder that, even with his surprising agility, he had sufficient energy to manipulate the keys to the satisfaction of so competent a witness as yourself.”

“It was too bad; but we made up for it later,” asserted the other. “There was a young girl there who gave us some of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words. Her expression was simply perfect. I wouldn’t have missed it for all the world; and now that I think of it, in a few days I can let you see for yourself how splendid it was. We persuaded her to encore the songs in the dark, and we got a flash-light photograph of two of them.”

“Oh! then it was not on the piano-forte she gave them?” said the Idiot.

“Oh no; all labial,” returned the genial gentleman.

Here Mr. Whitechoker began to look concerned, and whispered something to the School-master, who replied that there were enough others present to cope with the two parties to the conversation in case of a violent outbreak.

“I’d be very glad to see the photographs,” replied the Idiot. “Can’t I secure copies of them for my collection? You know I have the complete rendering of ‘Home, Sweet Home’ in kodak views, as sung by Patti. They are simply wonderful, and they prove what has repeatedly been said by critics, that, in the matter of expression, the superior of Patti has never been seen.”

“I’ll try to get them for you, though I doubt it can be done. The artist is a very shy young girl, and does not care to have her efforts given too great a publicity until she is ready to go into music a little more deeply. She is going to read the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ to us at our next concert. You’d better come. I’m told her gestures bring out the composer’s meaning in a manner never as yet equalled.”

“I’ll be there; thank you,” returned the Idiot. “And the next time those fellows at the club are down for a pool tournament I want you to come up and hear them play. It was extraordinary last night to hear the balls dropping one by one–click, click, click–as regularly as a metronome, into the pockets. One of the finest shots, I am sorry to say, I missed.”

“How did it happen?” asked the Bibliomaniac. “Weren’t your ears long enough?”

“It was a kiss shot, and I couldn’t hear it,” returned the Idiot.

“I think you men are crazy,” said the School-master, unable to contain himself any longer.

“So?” observed the Idiot, calmly. “And how do we show our insanity?”