Still, we did fairly well for a first appearance. The objection I had was that there was too much music and too little opera. The curtain was up and the lights down much longer than it was down and the lights up, and it is difficult to talk comfortably when the people above and below are hissing at you. Then operatic music is so absurd. Of the actual music, of course, I have no complaint. The price paid for it is a guarantee of its excellence, and certainly many of the stars have beautiful voices. It is a pleasure to hear them sing. It is _seeing_ them sing that destroys all illusions. I can lean back and close my eyes and enjoy it. But how different it is when one's eyes are open, and Juliet, age fifty, weight 200 pounds, has her head back, her eyes on the chandelier, her hands clasping her throat, and tosses high Cs at Romeo, age fifty, weight 195, who stands with bowed head, silent, making all the gestures of a conjurer who is throwing coins into the air, making them disappear. I have seen many operatic Juliets in my time, and absurd they all seem when I compare them with the girl who took the part in our high-school performance of the play at home years ago. Of course she did not sing the part, but she _did_ look it, and I must say I like, first of all, to see a thing; the hearing of it is merely icing on the cake. I happened to suggest a few of these ideas to Mrs. Radigan that night, and she did not agree with me at all. She said, surely--pointing her fan at me--I liked the "Pilgrim's Progress" in "Tan-howser" and the "quintette" in "Whoop-de-doodle-do." That woman has such a clinching way of saying things, I find it quite useless to argue with her. I believe now that she thinks John Bunyan wrote "Tannhäuser" and that the parlor-car effects in so many of the stage-settings are due entirely to the influence of Wagner. But with all her faults she is a most excellent soul. She gets along amazingly and will soon be varnished over. I know, for example, that she is making rapid progress in her French, for, after the opera, at supper she ordered some Philadelphia "capong" cooked in some remarkable French way. Her nasal twang was perfection, and I had no sympathy with the Rollers Club fellows who began to choke violently. I don't care much for those Rollers Club fellows, anyway, and am more than satisfied that when Mrs. Radigan appears again in grand opera she will have only Radigan and myself as a supporting company. CHAPTER V _Mrs. Radigan's First Thursday_