"It's a moving tale, invented as an excuse for a man who writes music so bad that he gets disgusted with it himself, and flies into wrath when he hears it," says Johnson. A subdued buzz is heard, and the master comes forth, gorgeous in a suit of purple velvet. His powdered wig and the enormous silver buckles on his shoes set off his figure with the proper accent. His florid face is smiling, and Garrick expresses a regret that there are to be no impromptu tragic events in way of chasing players from the stage. "Would you like to meet him?" asks the sharp-nosed Dean. Garrick and Johnson have enough of the rustic in them to be lion-hunters, and they reply to the question as one man, "Yes, indeed!" "I'll arrange it," was the answer. The leader raps for attention. Johnson closes his eyes, sighs, and leans back resignedly. The others look and listen with interest as the play proceeds. * * * * * The other day I read a book by Madame Columbier entitled, "Sara Barnum." Only a person of worth could draw forth such a fire of hot invective, biting sarcasm and frenzied vituperation as this volume contains. When I closed the volume it was with the feeling that Sara Bernhardt is surely the greatest woman of the age; and I was fully resolved that I must see her play at the first opportunity, no matter what the cost. And as for Madame Columbier, why she isn't so bad, either! The flashes of lightning in her swordplay are highly interesting. The book was born, as all good books, because its mother could not help it. Behind every page and between the lines you see the fevered toss of human emotion and hot ambition--these women were rivals. There were digs and scratches, bandied epithets in falsetto, and sounds like a piccolo played by a man in distress, before all this; and these are not explained, so you have to fill them in with your imagination. But the Bernhardt is the bigger woman of the two. She goes her splendid pace alone, and all the other woman can do is to bombard her with a book. The excellence of Handel is shown in that he achieved the enmity of some very good men. Read the "Spectator," and you will find its pages well peppered with thrusts at "foreigners," and sweeping cross-strokes at Italian Opera and all "bombastic beaters of the air, who smother harmony with bursts of discord in the name of music."