disturbance, during a concert. Sometimes it may be mere thoughtlessness;
sometimes boorishness, the want of the fine instinct which avoids
occasioning any annoyance; but usually it is due to a desire to attract
attention and to affect superiority to the common interest. It is, indeed,
mere coarse ostentation, like wearing diamonds at a hotel table or a purple
velvet train in the street. If the audience had the courage which Cleopatra
attributed to it, that part which was annoyed by the barbarians who chatter
and disturb would at once suppress the annoyance by an emphatic and
unmistakable hiss. If this were the practice in public assemblies, such
incidents as that at the Washington concert would be unknown. Until
it is the practice, even were Cleopatra's self the offender, every
self-respecting conductor who has a proper sense of his duties to the
audience will do with its sincere approval what Mr. Thomas did.

(_April_, 1883)




WOMAN'S DRESS


The American who sits in a street omnibus or railroad-car and sees a young
woman whose waist is pinched to a point that makes her breathing mere
panting and puffing, and whose feet are squeezed into shoes with a high
heel in the middle of the sole, which compels her to stump and hobble as
she tries to walk, should be very wary of praising the superiority of
European and American civilization to that of the East. The grade of
civilization which squeezes a waist into deformity is not, in that respect
at least, superior to that which squeezes a foot into deformity. It is in