And for ten thousand ages, day and night,
     The human race should write, and write, and write,
     Till all the pens and paper were used up,
     And the huge inkstand was an empty cup,
     Still would the scribblers clustered round its brim
     Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.

V

“Dolce, ma non troppo dolce,” said the Professor to the Mistress, who was sweetening his tea.  She always sweetens his and mine for us.  He has been attending a series of concerts, and borrowed the form of the directions to the orchestra.  “Sweet, but not too sweet,” he said, translating the Italian for the benefit of any of the company who might not be linguists or musical experts.

“Do you go to those musical hullabaloos?” called out Number Seven.  There was something very much like rudeness in this question and the tone in which it was asked.  But we are used to the outbursts, and extravagances, and oddities of Number Seven, and do not take offence at his rough speeches as we should if any other of the company uttered them.

“If you mean the concerts that have been going on this season, yes, I do,” said the Professor, in a bland, good-humored way.

“And do you take real pleasure in the din of all those screeching and banging and growling instruments?”

“Yes,” he answered, modestly, “I enjoy the brouhaha, if you choose to consider it such, of all this quarrelsome menagerie of noise-making machines, brought into order and harmony by the presiding genius, the leader, who has made a happy family of these snarling stringed instruments and whining wind instruments, so that although

     “Linguae centum sent, oraque centum,

“notwithstanding there are a hundred vibrating tongues and a hundred bellowing mouths, their one grand blended and harmonized uproar sets all my fibres tingling with a not unpleasing tremor.”

“Do you understand it?  Do you take any idea from it?  Do you know what it all means?” said Number Seven.

The Professor was long-suffering under this series of somewhat peremptory questions.  He replied very placidly, “I am afraid I have but a superficial outside acquaintance with the secrets, the unfathomable mysteries, of music.  I can no more conceive of the working conditions of the great composer,

     “’Untwisting all the chains that tie
     The hidden soul of harmony,’

“than a child of three years can follow the reasonings of Newton’s ‘Principia.’  I do not even pretend that I can appreciate the work of a great master as a born and trained musician does.  Still, I do love a great crash of harmonies, and the oftener I listen to these musical tempests the higher my soul seems to ride upon them, as the wild fowl I see through my window soar more freely and fearlessly the fiercer the storm with which they battle.”