Oh, wretched outsider that one is (if it all be true)--one whose heart, so hopelessly impervious to the written word, so helplessly callous to the spoken message, can be reached only by the organized vibrations of a trained larynx, a metal pipe, a reed, a fiddle-string--by invisible, impalpable, incomprehensible little air-waves in mathematical combination, that beat against a tiny drum at the back of one's ear. And these mathematical combinations and the laws that govern them have existed forever, before Moses, before Pan, long before either a larynx or a tympanum had been evolved. They are absolute! Oh, mystery of mysteries! Euterpe, Muse of Muses, what a personage hast thou become since first thou sattest for thy likeness (with that ridiculous lyre in thy untaught hands) to some Greek who could carve so much better than thou couldst play! Four strings; but not the fingerable strings of Stradivarius. Nay, I beg thy pardon--five; for thy scale was pentatonic, I believe. Orpheus himself had no better, it is true. It was with just such an instrument that he all but charmed his Eurydice out of Hades. But, alas, she went back; on second thoughts, she liked Hades best! Couldst thou fire and madden and wring the heart, and then melt and console and charm it into the peace that passeth all understanding, with those poor five rudimentary notes, and naught between? Couldst thou, out of those five sounds of fixed, unalterable pitch, make, not a sixth sound, but a star? What were they, those five sounds? "Do, re, mi, fa, sol?" What must thy songs without words have been, if thou didst ever make any? Thou wast in very deed a bread-and-butter miss in those days, Euterpe, for all that thy eight twin sisters were already grown up, and out; and now thou toppest them all by half a head, at least. "Tu leur mangerais des petits pates sur la tete--comme Madame Seraskier!" And oh, how thou beatest them all for beauty! In _my_ estimation, at least--like--like Madame Seraskier again! And hast thou done growing at last? Nay, indeed; thou art not even yet a bread-and-butter miss--thou art but a sweet baby, one year old, and seven feet high, tottering midway between some blessed heaven thou hast only just left and the dull home of us poor mortals. The sweet one-year-old baby of our kin puts its hands upon our knees and looks up into our eyes with eyes full of unutterable meaning. It has so much to say! It can only say "ga-ga" and "ba-ba"; but with oh! how searching a voice, how touching a look--that is, if one is fond of babies! We are moved to the very core; we want to understand, for it concerns us all; we were once like that ourselves--the individual and the race--but for the life of us we cannot _remember_. And what canst _thou_ say to us yet, Euterpe, but thy "ga-ga" and thy "ba-ba," the inarticulate sweetness whereof we feel and cannot comprehend? But how beautiful it is--and what a look thou hast, and what a voice--that is, if one is fond of music!