Were Covent Garden not within such easy reach of the Quarter I could scarcely account for the trust which the needy musician places in us. Certainly it is because of no effort or encouragement on our side. We have small connection with the musical world, and whether because of the size of the singers or the commercial atmosphere at Baireuth, J. since we heard "Parsifal" there will not be induced to go to the opera anywhere, or to venture upon a concert. Under the circumstances, the most imaginative musician could not make believe in a professional bond between us, though there is nothing to shake his faith in the kinship of all the arts and, therefore, in our readiness to support the stray tenor or violinist who cannot support himself. But imagination, anyway, is not his strong point. He seldom displays the richness of fancy of our other Beggars, and I can recall only one, a pianist who had grasped the possibilities of "Who's Who." His use of it, however, went far to atone for the neglect of the rest. With its aid he had discovered not only that we were Philadelphians, but that Mr. David Bispham was also, and he had to let off his enthusiasm over Philadelphia and "dear old Dave Bispham" before he got down to business. There his originality gave out. His was the same old story of a run of misfortunes and disappointments--"it could never have happened if dear old Dave Bispham had been in town"--and the climax was the dying wife for whom our sympathy has been asked too often for a particle to be left. The only difference was that she took rather longer in dying than usual, and the pianist returned to report her removal from the shelter of a friend's house to the hospital, from the hospital to lodgings, and from the lodgings he threatened us with the spectacle of her drawing her last breath in the gutter if we did not, then and there, pay his landlady and his doctor and his friend to whom he was deeply in debt. We were spared her death, probably because by that time the pianist saw the wisdom of carrying the story of her sufferings to more responsive ears, though it is not likely that he met with much success anywhere. He was too well dressed for the part. With his brand-new frock coat and immaculate silk hat, with his gold-mounted cane and Suede gloves, he was better equipped for the _jeune premier_ warbling of love, than for the grief-stricken husband watching in penniless desolation by the bedside of a dying wife.