when the words of Mr. Thomas concentrated the gaze of the audience upon the
disturbers of the peace, her Majesty, known to everybody, was supposed to
be the ringleader of the _emeute_. The story at once flew abroad, upon
the wings of those swift birds of prey--as she called them--the Washington
correspondents, and she was mentioned by name as the chief offender.

It was not difficult to persuade the most placable of queens that the Easy
Chair could not have intended a personal censure. But the Chair could not
agree that Thomas's conduct was unjustifiable. Cleopatra urged that the
conductor of an orchestra at a concert is not responsible for the behavior
of the audience. An audience, she said, can take care of itself, and it is
an unwarrantable impertinence for a conductor to arrest the performance
because he is irritated by a noise of whispering voices or of slamming
doors. "I saw you, Mr. Easy Chair," she said, "on the evening of Rachel's
first performance in this country. What would you have thought if she had
stopped short in the play--it was Corneille's _Les Horaces_, you
remember--because she was annoyed by the rustling of the leaves of a
thousand books of the play which the audience turned over at the same
moment?"

The Easy Chair declined to step into the snare which was plainly set in its
sight. It would not accept an illustration as an argument. The enjoyment at
a concert, it contended, for which the audience has paid in advance, and to
which it is entitled, depends upon conditions of silence and order which
it can not itself maintain without serious disturbance. It may indeed cry
"Hush!" and "Put him out!" but not only would that cry be of doubtful
effect, but experience proves that a concert audience will not raise it. If
the audience were left to itself, it would permit late arrivals, and all
the disturbance of chatter and movement. To twist the line of Goldsmith,
those who came to pray would be at the mercy of those who came to scoff;