If you go there you will be haunted by music for days afterward. I say "haunted" because that is the only word to describe your feeling of pursuit by melody. And I think I have discovered the reason for it. A poet once said that the only permanent emotion we human beings are capable of is--not love, as we like to imagine--but _longing_. And that is what this music says to you. It is the very essence of longing--the eternal seeking, the rapturous satisfaction, the disappointment, and the renewed quest. I have never heard such a quality of _sehnsucht_ in any music; it is almost more than you can bear. Of course, in these surroundings, you must listen to the complete gamut of new popular songs; but at intervals, when the managerial demand for "noise" can be ignored for a moment, you will be rewarded by the Thais _Meditation_ or a Schutt waltz or that exquisite Saint-Saens poem called _The Swan_--or even a Tschaikowsky song. Where does the tone come from, you keep wondering? Not from a wooden instrument, not from small human fingers, surely. It is tone of such richness and depth that you sometimes have the illusion of each note being sung twice. "It transcends music to me entirely and becomes a matter of life--or of soul," said a critic who listened with me the other day. Through it all the artist's earnest face is still and unchanging. That is part of the fascination--the contrast of that tumultuous singing and the thoughtful, dreaming face that seems to control it all. "My violin belongs to me--yes," she says, "but that is such a cold word. It is part of my body. I feel it is growing on me just like my arms and hands. I could not live without it." If you watch her closely you will decide that her playing is the result of an extraordinary sensitiveness to life. If you know her, as I do, you will expand that judgment to this one: an extraordinary strength about life; for she is both deep and strong--qualities that are supposed to be inseparable, but which are so rarely found together that their combination means--a great spirit. I am afraid I am too much of a musician not to be a romanticist. With out music life to me would be a mistake.--_Nietzsche to Brandes, 1888._ * * * * * All restlessness, misery, all crime, is the result of the betrayal of one's inner life.--_Will Lexington Comfort in "Midstream."_ EDITORIALS Our New Poet