On the whole subject of music—music, whether quartet or solo, vocal or instrumental—Mr. Whacker had grown sore, and as nearly irritable as his strong nature admitted of. His neighbors had worried him. They—and who shall wonder at it?—had naturally been filled with amazement—and, what is harder to bear—amusement—when their old friend had suddenly, at his time of life, burst out, as the homely phrase runs, in a fresh place,—and of this he could not but be aware; so that in the end he grew so sensitive under their jokes that he altogether gave over inviting even his nearest neighbors to be present at the Elmington musical performances. “Well, I hear your grandfather has got a new Dutchman,”—that was the way one old gentleman used to speak of the arrival at Elmington of each successive find of Waldteufel’s in Baltimore; and then his sides would shake. Naturally enough, my grandfather grew more and more reticent, under the circumstances, as to his musical doings and projects. Now, the Elmington mansion was, originally, like most of the residences of the Virginia gentry, a rather plain and ill-planned structure. I dare say it had never occurred to the ancestral Whacker who contrived it that any one of its rooms would ever be acoustically tested by a string quartet. At any rate, my grandfather found his parlor, with its thick carpet and heavy furniture, very unsatisfactory as a concert-room, and resolved to build a better. True, he himself never uttered a word to this effect. Like a skilful strategist, he kept his front and flanks well covered as he advanced upon his objective-point. He began his forward movement with some skill. The Virginians of that day, as is well known, with a hospitality that defied all arithmetic, used to stow away in their houses more people in proportion to the number of the rooms than was at all justifiable,—and a marvellous good time they all had too,—the necessity for extra ventilation being met by the happy provision of nature, that no true Virginian ever shuts a door. I am far from claiming, my dear boy, that these ancestors of yours were entitled to any credit for their hospitality. For, even in our day of Mere Progress, we have ascertained that this is but a semibarbarous virtue, while, in your day of Perfected Sweetness and Light, it will be classed, doubtless, among the entirely savage vices. I am writing neither eulogium nor apology. I draw pictures merely. You and your day must draw the moral.