Carpentaria preserved the immobility of carven stone until the plaudits had ceased; they lasted for exactly five and a half minutes. Consequently the concert was exactly five and a half minutes late in commencing. Carpentaria himself was never late, but his public had a habit of delaying him. Suddenly he brought rown his baton with a surprising shock. The carven stone had started into life, and “God save the King” was under way. Now to see Carpentaria conduct was one of the sights of the world. He conducted not merely with his hand and eye, but with the whole of his immortal frame and his uniform. It was said that he was capable of conducting the Eroica Symphony of Beethoven with his left foot--and who shall deny it? “God save the King” was child’s play to him. Moreover, he showed a certain reserve in handling it. He merely conducted it as though in conducting it he himself were literally saving the King. That was all. But with what snap, what dash, what _chic_, what splash and what magnificent presence of mind did he save the King! The applause was wild and ample. The next item was “The City of Pleasure March,” composed by Carpentaria. Indeed, Carpentaria conducted nothing but national hymns, his own compositions, and, as a superlative concession, Wagner and Beethoven. “The City of Pleasure” was in Carpentaria’s finest style, and it was planned to give him the fullest scope in conducting it. He had already made it famous in a triumphal tour through the United States in the previous year. It began with the utmost possible volume of sound. It had a contagious and infectious lilt to it, and both the lilt and the volume of sound were continued without the slightest respite during the whole composition. In the course of this masterpiece Carpentaria performed physical feats that would have astounded Cinquevalli and the Schaffer Troupe. In the frenzy of self-expression he all but stood on his head. The bandstand was too small for him; he needed a planet on which to circulate. By turns his baton was a sceptre, a pump-handle, a maypole, a crutch, a drumstick, a flag, a toothpick, a mop, a pendulum, a whip, a bottle of soothing-syrup, and a scorpion. By turns he whipped, tortured, encouraged, liberated, imprisoned, mopped up, measured, governed, diverted, pushed over, pulled back, and turned inside out his band, and whenever their enthusiasm seemed likely to lead them into indiscretions, he soothed them with the soothing-syrup. By turns the conducting of the piece was a march, a campaign, a house on fire, the race for the Derby, the forging of a hundred-ton gun, a display of fireworks, a mayoral banquet, and a mother scolding a numerous family. It was colossal. At the close, as sudden as the shutting of a door, there was a vast strange silence, and then the applause, as colossal as the piece, broke out like a conflagration.