"And do you take real pleasure in the din of all those screeching and
banging and growling instruments?"

"Yes," he answered, modestly, "I enjoy the brouhaha, if you choose to
consider it such, of all this quarrelsome menagerie of noise-making
machines, brought into order and harmony by the presiding genius, the
leader, who has made a happy family of these snarling stringed
instruments and whining wind instruments, so that although

"Linguae centum sent, oraque centum,

"notwithstanding there are a hundred vibrating tongues and a hundred
bellowing mouths, their one grand blended and harmonized uproar sets all
my fibres tingling with a not unpleasing tremor."

"Do you understand it? Do you take any idea from it? Do you know what
it all means?" said Number Seven.

The Professor was long-suffering under this series of somewhat peremptory
questions. He replied very placidly, "I am afraid I have but a
superficial outside acquaintance with the secrets, the unfathomable
mysteries, of music. I can no more conceive of the working conditions of
the great composer,

"'Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony,'

"than a child of three years can follow the reasonings of Newton's
'Principia.' I do not even pretend that I can appreciate the work of a