Part 8

Brendel having sent him some of Palestrina's music, he writes that "it really sounds sometimes like music of the spheres--and what art at the same time! I am convinced he is the greatest musical genius Italy has produced." Nineteen years previous to this he had written from Brescia: "Were not the Italian language itself a kind of eternal music (the Count aptly called it a long-drawn-out A-minor chord), I should not hear anything rational. Of the ardor with which they play, you can form no more conception than of their slovenliness and lack of elegance and precision." Handel appears to be mentioned only once in all of Schumann's correspondence ("I consider 'Israel in Egypt' the ideal of a choral work"), but Bach is always on his tongue. The following is one of the profoundest criticisms ever written: "Mozart and Haydn knew of Bach only a few pages and passages, and the effect which Bach, if they had known him in all his greatness, would have had on them, is incalculable. The harmonic depth, the poetic and humorous qualities of modern music have their source chiefly in Bach: Mendelssohn, Bennett, Chopin, Hiller, all the so-called Romanticists (I mean those of the German school) approximate in their music much closer to Bach than to Mozart."

To Wagner there are several references, betraying a most remarkable struggle between critical honesty and professional jealousy. Thus, in 1845, Schumann writes to Mendelssohn of "Tannhaeuser:"

"Wagner has just finished a new opera--no doubt a clever fellow, full of eccentric notions, and bold beyond measure. The aristocracy is still in raptures over him on account of his 'Rienzi,' but in reality he cannot conceive or write four consecutive bars of good or even correct music. What all these composers lack is the art of writing pure harmonies and four-part choruses. The music is not a straw better than that of 'Rienzi,' rather weaker, more artificial! But if I should write this I should be accused of envy, hence I say it only to you, as I am aware that you have known all this a long time."

But in another letter to Mendelssohn, written three weeks later, he recants: "I must take back much of what I wrote regarding 'Tannhaeuser,' after reading the score; on the stage the effect is quite different. I was deeply moved by many parts." And to Heinrich Dorn he writes, a few weeks after this: "I wish you could see Wagner's 'Tannhaeuser.' It contains profound and original ideas, and is a hundred times better than his previous operas, though some of the music is trivial. In a word, he may become of great importance to the stage, and, so far as I know him, he has the requisite courage. The technical part, the instrumentation, I find excellent, incomparably more masterly than formerly."

Nevertheless, seven years later still, he once more returns to the attack, and declares that Wagner's music, "apart from the performance, is simply amateurish, void of contents, and disagreeable; and it is a sad proof of corrupt taste that, in the face of the many dramatic master-works which Germany has produced, some persons have the presumption to belittle these in favor of Wagner's. Yet enough of this. The future will pronounce judgment in this matter, too." Poor Schumann! His own opera, "Genoveva," was a failure, while "Tannhaeuser" and "Lohengrin" were everywhere received with enthusiasm. This was a quarter of a century ago; and the future has judged, "Tannhaeuser" and "Lohengrin" being now the most popular of all works in the operatic repertory.

What caused the failure of Schumann's only opera was not a lack of dramatic genius, but of theatrical instinct. He believed that in "Genoveva" "every bar is thoroughly dramatic;" and so it is, as might have been expected of the composer of such an intensely emotional and passionate song as "Ich grolle nicht" and many others. But Schubert, too, could write such thrilling five-minute dramas as the "Erlking" and the "Doppelgaenger," without being able to compose a successful opera. Like Schumann, he could not paint al fresco, could not command that bolder and broader sweep which is required of an operatic composer. It is characteristic of Schumann that he did not write an opera till late in life, whereas born operatic composers have commonly begun their career with their specialty. Indeed, it was only ten years before he composed his opera that Schumann wrote to a friend: "You ought to write more for the voice. Or are you, perhaps, like myself, who have all my life placed vocal music below instrumental, and never considered it a great art? But don't speak to anyone about this." Oddly enough, less than a year after this he writes to another friend: "At present I write only vocal pieces.... I can hardly tell you what a delight it is to write for the voice as compared with instruments, and how it throbs and rages within me when I am at work. Entirely new things have been revealed to me, and I am thinking of writing an opera, which, however, will not be possible until I have entirely freed myself from editorial work."

Like other vocal composers, Schumann suffered much from the lack of suitable texts. In one letter he suggests that Lenau might perhaps be induced to write a few poems for composers, to be printed in "The Zeitschrift:" "the composers are thirsting for texts." In several other letters we become familiar with some of his plans which were never executed, owing, apparently, to the shortcomings of the librettists. One of these was R. Pohl, who in all earnestness sent Schumann a serious text in which the moon was introduced as one of the vocalists! Schumann mildly remonstrated that "to conceive of the moon as a person, especially as singing, would be too risky." So the project of "Ritter Mond" was abandoned, and it is to be regretted that Schumann did not reject his "Genoveva" libretto, which was largely responsible for the failure of the opera.

One project of Schumann's is mentioned which it is to be very much regretted he never carried out. "I am at present preparing an essay on Shakspere's relations to music, his utterances and views, the manner in which he introduces music in his dramas, etc., etc.--an exceedingly fertile and attractive theme, the execution of which would, it is true, require some time, as I should have to read the whole of Shakspere's works for this purpose." His object was to send this to Jena as a dissertation for a Doctor's degree, with which he hoped to soften the heart of the obdurate Wieck, who opposed his marriage with Clara, and at the same time to make an impression on the public. Schumann had had painful experience of the fact that for genius itself there is little recognition in Germany unless it has a handle to its name--a "von" or a "Herr Doctor." Clara, however, loved him for his genius, and for the impassioned pieces and songs he wrote to express his admiration of her and of woman in general; and, like other German men of genius, he had his reward--after death. "No tone poet," says Naumann, "has been more enthusiastic in the praise of woman than Robert Schumann; he was a second Frauenlob. This was acknowledged by the maidens of Bonn, who, at his interment, filled the cemetery, and crowned his tomb with innumerable garlands."

MUSIC AND MORALS

Although music in the complex harmonic form known to us is only a few centuries old, simple rhythmic melodies were sung, or played on various instruments, by all the ancient civilized nations, and are sung or played to-day by African and Australian savages who have never come into contact with civilization. And what is more, the remarkable influence which music has in arousing human emotions has been appreciated at all times.

Tourists relate that in some of the inland countries of Africa, scarcely any work is done by the natives except to the sound of music; and Cruikshank, speaking of the coast negroes, says it is laughable to observe the effect of their rude music on all classes, old and young, men, women, and children. "However employed, whether passing quietly through the street, carrying water from the pond, or assisting in some grave procession, no sooner do they hear the rapid beats of a distant drum, than they begin to caper and dance spontaneously. The bricklayer will throw down his trowel for a minute, the carpenter leave his bench, the corn grinder her milling stone, and the porter his load, to keep time to the inspiriting sound."

Dr. Tschudi, in his fascinating work on Peru, describes two of the musical instruments used by the Indians, and their emotional function. One is the Pututo, "a large conch on which they perform mournful music, as the accompaniment of their funeral dances." The other is called Jaina, and is a rude kind of clarionet made from a reed. "Its tone," says Tschudi, "is indescribable in its melancholy, and it produces an extraordinary impression on the natives. If a group of Indians are rioting and drinking, or engaged in furious conflicts with each other, and the sound of the Jaina is suddenly heard, the tumult ceases, as if by a stroke of magic. A dead stillness prevails, and all listen devoutly to the magic tones of the simple reed; tones which frequently draw tears from the eyes of the apathetic Indians."

If the untutored primitive man can be thus overpowered by the charm of such simple music, we can hardly wonder at the extravagant power ascribed to this art by the ancient civilized nations. The fairy tale of Orpheus, who tamed wild animals and moved rocks and trees with his singing and playing, and the story of the dolphin that was attracted by Arion's song and carried him safely across the sea, are quite as significant as if they were true stories, for they show that the Greeks were so deeply moved by music that they could readily imagine it to have a similar effect on animals, and even on inanimate objects. Almost three thousand years ago, Homer represented Achilles as "comforting his heart with the sound of the lyre," after losing his sweet Briseis; "stimulating his courage and singing the deeds of the heroes." And, as Emil Naumann fancies, there is a moral underlying the myth of the siren; "for, as Homer elsewhere suggests, noble and manly music invigorates the spirit, strengthens wavering man, and incites him to great and worthy deeds, whereas false and sensuous music excites and confuses, robs man of his self-control, till his passions overcome him as the waves overwhelmed the bewitched sailor who listened to the voice of the charmer."

At a later period in Greek history, the philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, continued to attribute to music power so great, that we can only understand them if we bear in mind that with the Greeks the word music was a comprehensive term for all the arts presided over by the Muses, and that, even when music in our sense is alluded to by them, the reference is at the same time to the poetry which was almost always associated with music, and made its meaning and expression more definite. Thus, we can realize how Terpander could, by the power of his song, reconcile the political factions in Sparta, and how Plato could write, in the "Republic," that "any musical innovation is full of danger to the state and ought to be prevented." He looked upon music as a tonic which does for the mind what gymnastics do for the body; and taught that only such music ought to be tolerated by the state as had a moral purpose, while enervating forms should be suppressed by the law makers.

Yet, after making due allowance for the fact that the word music was used in this comprehensive sense, enough remains to show that the power of music proper, the power of rhythmic melody, was profoundly appreciated by the Greeks. If they had not felt how greatly music intensifies and quickens the emotions, they would not have wedded all their poetry to it, nor have resorted to it on all solemn and festive occasions; nor would the Pythagoreans have found anyone willing to believe in their doctrine that music has power to control the passions. "They firmly believed," says Naumann, "that sweet harmony and flowing melody alone were capable of restoring the even balance of the disturbed mind, and of renewing its harmonious relations with the world. Playing on the lyre, therefore, formed part of the daily exercises of the disciples of the renowned philosopher, and none dared seek his nightly couch without having first refreshed his soul at the fount of music, nor return to the duties of the day without having braced his energies with jubilant strains. Pythagoras is said to have recommended the use of special melodies as antidotal to special passions, and indeed, it is related of him that on a certain occasion he, by a solemn air, brought back to reason a youth who, maddened by love and jealousy, was about setting fire to the house of his mistress."

Similar marvellous powers were ascribed to music by the other nations. The Chinese have an old saying that "Music has the power to make Heaven descend upon earth." This art was constantly kept under rigid supervision by the government, and 354 years before Christ, one of the Emperors issued a special edict against weak, effeminate music; to which, therefore, a demoralizing influence was obviously attributed. The Japanese, we read, likewise "revere music and connect it with their idol worship," and in olden times it seems to have had even a political function, for it is said that "formerly an ambassador, in addressing a foreign court to which he was accredited, did not speak, but sang his mission." The Hindoos, again, attributed supernatural power to music. Some melodies had the power, as they believed, to bring down rain, others to move men and animals, as well as lifeless objects. The fact that they traced the origin of music to the gods shows in what esteem they held it; and their quaint story of the 16,000 nymphs and shepherdesses, each of whom invented a new key and melody in her emulous eagerness to move the heart and win the love of the handsome young god Krishna, shows that the amorous power of music was already understood in those days.

Once more, the exalted notions which the ancient Hebrews had of the dignity and importance of music, is indicated by the fact that, according to Josephus, the treasures of Solomon's Temple (which was also a great school of music) included 40,000 harps and psalteries of pure copper, and 200,000 silver trumpets. In the schools of the prophets, musical practice was an essential item. During the period of captivity the Israelites at first gave way to despondency, exclaiming, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" "But by and by they would take down their harps again from the willow bows and seek solace for the sorrows of the long exile in recalling the loved melody of their native land, and the sacred psalmody of their desolated temple" (McClintock and Strong). There was hardly an occasion arising above the commonplace events of everyday life, when the ancient Hebrews did not resort to music. Trumpets were used at the royal proclamations and at the dedication of the Temple. There were doleful chants for funeral processions; joyous melodies for bridal processions and banquets; stirring martial strains to incite courage in battle and to celebrate victories, religious songs, and domestic music for private recreation and pleasure; and even "the grape gatherers sang as they gathered in the vintage, and the wine-presses were trodden with the shout of a song; the women sang as they toiled at the mill, and on every occasion the land of the Hebrews, during their national prosperity, was a land of music and melody." And finally, the therapeutic value of music and its power to stimulate the creative faculties were recognized. The prophets composed their songs and uttered their prophecies to the sound of musical instruments, and David drove out the evil spirit from Saul, as we read in the Bible: "And it came to pass when the spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp and played with his hands. So Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him."

The preceding facts sufficiently illustrate the effects of music on the emotions and morals of ancient and primitive nations. Now, within the Christian era music has made enormous strides in its evolution as an art, and it seems therefore reasonable to infer that its emotional and moral power has also increased. Yet, strange to say, a tendency has manifested itself of late, in many quarters, to flatly deny the emotional and moral potency of music. The late Richard Grant White, for instance, in a series of articles on the Influence of Music, in "The Atlantic Monthly," comes to the conclusion that "a fine appreciation of even the noblest music is not an indication of mental elevation, or of moral purity, or of delicacy of feeling, or even (except in music) of refinement of taste." "The greatest, keenest pleasure of my life," he adds, "is one that may be shared equally with me by a dunce, a vulgarian, or a villain;" and he ends by asserting, dogmatically, that a taste for music has no more to do with our minds or morals than with our complexions or stature. Dr. Hanslick, the eminent critic and professor of musical history in the University of Vienna, goes even farther. "There can be no doubt," he says, "that music had a much more direct effect on the ancient nations than it has on us." To-day, "the feelings of the layman are affected most, those of an educated artist least, by music." "The moral influence of tones increases in proportion as the culture of mind and character decreases. The smaller the resistance offered by culture, the more does this power strike home. It is well known that it is on savages that music exerts its greatest influence."

Let us briefly test these sceptical paradoxes in the light of mediaeval history and modern biography. Is it only among the ancient and primitive people, and among the musically uneducated, that the divine art exerts an emotional influence? St. Jerome evidently did not think so. He believed, at any rate, that music can exert a demoralizing influence, and he taught that Christian maidens should know nothing of the lyre and the flute. The eminent divine was guided in this matter by the same process of illogical reasoning of which, later, the Puritans were guilty when they banished music from the churches. In view of the fact that music was used to heighten the charms of wanton Roman festivities or Pagan rites, St. Jerome condemned the art itself, ignorant of the fact that music can never be immoral in itself, but only through evil associations. St. Augustine took a different view of music from St. Jerome. When he first heard the Christian chant at Milan he exclaimed: "Oh, my God! When the sweet voice of the congregation broke upon mine ear, how I wept over Thy hymns of praise. The sound poured into mine ears and Thy truth entered my heart. Then glowed within me the spirit of devotion; tears poured forth, and I rejoiced." Here we have an illustration of how music intensifies and exalts the emotions of educated men. St. Augustine's devotion "glowed within him" when he heard the music. It is for this power that the church has always employed music as a hand-maid; and those ecclesiastics who would to-day banish it arbitrarily from the church, know not what a valuable ally they are blindly repulsing in these days of religious scepticism. As Mr. Gladstone very recently remarked: "Ever since the time of St. Augustine, I might perhaps say of St. Paul, the power of music in assisting Christian devotion has been upon record, and great schools of Christian musicians have attested and confirmed the union of the art with worship."

But the greatest musical enthusiast in the ranks of mediaeval churchmen was Martin Luther. To judge by the extraordinary influence which music had on him, Luther must doubtless be classed among the lowest of savages, if Dr. Hanslick is right in saying that it is on savages that music exerts its greatest influence. He wrote a special treatise on music, in which he placed it next to theology. "Besides theology," he wrote in a letter to the musician Senfel, "music is the only art capable of affording peace and joy of the heart like that induced by the study of the science of divinity. The proof of this is that the devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as he does before the Word of God. This is why the prophets preferred music before all the other arts ... proclaiming the Word in psalms and hymns.... My heart, which is full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary."

Luther had a good voice and a knowledge of musical composition. He played the flute and the lute, and in church he introduced congregational singing, in which the people took an active part in worship by means of the chorales. It is related that, as a child, he used to sing with other boys in the street in winter, for his daily bread, and that on one occasion, Frau Cotta frantically rushed from her house on hearing his pleading tones, took him in, and gave him a warm meal. Later in life, when he was an Augustine monk, he often chased away his melancholy and temptations by playing on his lute, and the story goes that "one day, after a self-inflicted chastisement, he was found in a fainting condition in his cell, and that his cloistered brethren recalled him to consciousness by soft music, well knowing that music was the balsam for all wounds of the troubled mind of their 'dear Martinus.'"

Coming to more recent times, we find that some of the greatest composers and other men of genius were "savages," judged by Dr. Hanslick's standard.

When Congreve wrote that "music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," did he not mean to imply that educated people are not affected by it? Take the case, for instance, of that old barbarian, Joseph Haydn, and note how he was affected by the "Creation" when he heard it sung. "One moment," he said to Griesinger, "I was as cold as ice, and the next I seemed on fire, and more than once I feared I should have a stroke." Another "savage," Cherubini, when he heard a Haydn symphony for the first time, was so greatly excited by it that it forcibly moved him from his seat. "He trembled all over, his eyes grew dim, and this condition continued long after the symphony was ended. Then came the reaction. His eyes filled with tears, and from that instant the direction of his work was decided." (Nohl.)

Similar incidents might be quoted from the biographies of almost all the great composers. Berlioz, in his essay on Music, after referring to the story of Alexander the Great, who fell into a delirium at the accents of Timotheus, and the story of the Danish King Eric, "whom certain songs made so furious that he killed some of his best servants," dwells on the inconsistency of Rousseau, who, while ridiculing the accounts of the wonders worked by ancient music, nevertheless, "seems in other places to give them enough credence to place that ancient art, which we hardly know at all, and which he himself knew no better than the rest of us, far above the art of our own day." For himself, Berlioz believed that the power of modern music is of at least equal value with the doubtful anecdotes of ancient historians. "How often," he says, "have we not seen hearers agitated by terrible spasms, weep and laugh at once, and manifest all the symptoms of delirium and fever, while listening to the masterpieces of our great masters." He relates the case of a young Provencal musician, who blew out his brains at the door of the Opera after a second hearing of Spontini's "Vestale," having previously explained in a letter, that after this ecstatic enjoyment, he did not care to remain in this prosaic world; and the case of the famous singer Malibran, who, on hearing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for the first time, at the Conservatoire, "was seized with such convulsions that she had to be carried out of the hall." "We have in such cases," Berlioz continues, "seen time and again, serious men obliged to leave the room to hide the violence of their emotions from the public gaze." As for those feelings which Berlioz owed personally to music, he affirms that nothing in the world can give an exact idea of them to those who have not experienced them. Not to mention the moral affections that the art developed in him, and only to cite the impressions received at the moment of the performance of works he admired, this is what he says he can affirm in all truthfulness: "While hearing certain pieces of music, my vital forces seem at first to be doubled; I feel a delicious pleasure, in which reason has no part; the habit of analysis itself then gives rise to admiration; the emotion, growing in the direct ratio of the energy and grandeur of the composer's ideas, soon produces a strange agitation in the circulation of the blood; my arteries pulsate violently; tears, which usually announce the end of the paroxysm, often indicate only a progressive stage which is to become much more intense. In this case there follow spasmodic contractions of the muscles, trembling in all the limbs, a total numbness in the feet and hands, partial paralysis of the optic and auditory nerves. I can no longer see, I can hardly hear: vertigo ... almost swooning...." Such was the effect of music on Berlioz.

As in a matter of this sort personal testimony is of more value than anything else, I may perhaps be permitted to refer to some of my own experiences. I have often been in the state of mind and body so vividly described by Berlioz, except as regards the numbness of the extremities and the partial paralysis of the sensory nerves. Hundreds of times I have enjoyed that harmless aesthetic intoxication which I believe to be more delicious to the initiated than the sweet delights of an opium eater--a musical intoxication which does not only fill the brain with floods of voluptuous delight, but sends thrills down the spinal column and to the very finger-tips, like so many electric shocks. As a boy, every experience of this sort fired my imagination with ambition, and led to all sorts of noble resolutions, some of which, at any rate, were carried into execution. The deepest impression ever made on me by any work of art was at Munich, ten years ago, when I heard for the first time Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde," which I was already familiar with through the pianoforte score. The performance began at six o'clock, and I had had nothing to eat since noon. It lasted till eleven o'clock, and one might imagine that, after all this emotional excitement, I must have been ravenously hungry. So I was; but without the slightest affectation, I was horrified at the mere thought of indulging in such a coarse act as eating after enjoying such ravishing music. So I hurried back to the hotel, eager to get into my room and indulge in a long fit of weeping; and not a wink did I sleep that night, the most passionate scenes from the opera haunting me persistently, and almost as vividly as if I had been back in the theatre.

Indeed, it was the irresistible power of Wagner's music that first made me go to Europe, and that changed the whole current of my life. After graduating from Harvard I had only a few dollars in my pocket; but instead of trying to find employment and earn my daily bread, I recklessly borrowed $500 of a good-natured uncle and went to Europe, for the sole purpose of attending the first Bayreuth Festival. I had about four hundred dollars when I arrived in Bayreuth, and of these I spent two hundred and twenty-five dollars for tickets for the three series of Nibelung performances, not knowing what would become of me after the remaining one hundred and seventy-five dollars was spent. It was several weeks before the performances, and Wagner had given strict orders that no one, without exception, should be admitted to the rehearsals. But I was not to be so easily baffled, and one afternoon I sneaked into the lobby and succeeded in catching some wonderful orchestral strains by applying my ear to a keyhole. But my pleasure was short-lived. An attendant espied me and summarily ordered me off the premises, despite my humble entreaties and attempts at bribery. I now resolved to make a personal appeal to Wagner; so, a few days later, as he was entering the theatre, arm in arm with Wilhelm, I boldly walked up to him and told him I had bought tickets to all the performances, but was very anxious to attend the rehearsals, adding that I represented a New York and a Boston journal. At the mention of the word newspaper, a frown passed over his face, and he said, rather abruptly, "I don't care much about newspapers. I can get along without them." But, in a second, a smile drove away the frown and he added: "I have given orders that no one shall be admitted. However, you have come a long way--and as I have found it necessary to make some exceptions, I will admit you too." He then asked for my card and told me I would be admitted by mentioning my name to the doorkeeper. That he did not bear any deep resentment against me for unfortunately being a newspaper man, he showed the next day, by walking up to me and asking me if I had succeeded in getting in.

I mention these incidents because I think they help to disprove the notion that modern music has less power over the actions and feelings of men than primitive and ancient music. It was the wild enthusiasm inspired in me by Wagner's earlier operas that led me irresistibly to Bayreuth, and I really would have been willing to toil as a slave for years rather than miss this festival. And my experience was that of hundreds who had saved up their pennies for this occasion, or had formed pools and drawn lots if the sum was too small. I met three men in Bayreuth who had scraped together enough money for a third-class trip from Berlin, but not enough to pay for a complete Nibelung ticket for each. So they took turns and each heard his share of the Trilogy. The artists, moreover, the greatest in Germany, were prompted by their enthusiasm to give their services at this festival without any pecuniary compensation. Such actions are more eloquent of deep feeling than any words could be. How trivial are those ancient myths about Arion and Orpheus compared with this modern fact--the building of the Bayreuth Theatre with the million marks contributed by Wagner's admirers in all parts of the world!

It is easy to see how Prof. Hanslick fell into the error of imagining that music exerts its greatest influence on savages. He probably inferred this from the fact that savages are more obviously excited by it, and gesticulate more wildly, than we do. But this does not prove his point. Savages are more demonstrative in their expression of all their emotions than we are; but this does not indicate that their emotions are deeper. On the contrary, as the poet has told us, it is the shallow brooks and the shallow passions that murmur; "the deep are dumb." It is a rule of etiquette in civilized society to repress any extravagant demonstration of feeling by gestures; and this is the reason why we are apparently less affected by music than savages. Yet, how difficult it is even to-day to repress the muscular impulses imparted by gay music, is seen in the irresistible desire to dance which seizes us when we hear a Strauss waltz played with the true Viennese swing; and in the provoking habit which some people have of beating time with their feet. Would anyone assert that a man who thus loudly beats time with his boots is more deeply affected by the music than you or I who keep quiet? Fiddlesticks! He shows just the contrary. If he had as delicate and intense an appreciation of the music as you have, he would know that the noise made by his boots utterly mars the purity of the musical sound, and jars on refined ears like the filing of a saw. If demonstrativeness is to be taken as a test of feeling, then the ignorant audiences who stamp and roar over the vulgar horse-play in a variety show have deeper feelings than the educated reader who, in his room, enjoys the exquisite works of humor of the great writers without any other expression than a smile.