It was a strange chance that took the Easy Chair, the other evening,
to the opera in the midst of a terrible war. But there was the scene,
exactly as it used to be. There were the bright rows of pretty women
and smiling men; the white and fanciful opera-cloaks; the gay rich
dresses; the floating ribbons; the marvellous _chevelures_; the
pearl-gray, the dove, and "tan" gloves, holding the jewelled fans and
the beautiful bouquets--the smile, the sparkle, the grace, the superb
and irresistible dandyism that we all know so well in the days of
golden youth--they were all there, and the warm atmosphere was sweet
with the thick odor of heliotrope, the very scent of _haute societe_.

The house was full: the opera was "Faust," and by one of the exquisite
felicities of the stage, the hero, a mild, ineffective gentleman, sang
his ditties and passionate bursts in Italian, while the poor Gretchen
vowed and rouladed in the German tongue. Certainly nothing is more
comical than the careful gravity with which people of the highest
civilization look at the absurd incongruities of the stage. After the
polyglot love-making, Gretchen goes up steps and enters a house.
Presently she opens a window at which she evidently could not appear
as she does breast high, without having her feet in the cellar. The
Italian Faust rushes, ascends three steps leading to the window, which
could not by any possibility appropriately be found there, and
reclines his head upon the bosom of the fond maid. We all look on and
applaud with "sensation." But ought we not to insist, however, that
ladies in the play shall stand upon the floor, and that the floor in a
stately mansion shall not be two feet below the front door-sill? And
ought we not to demand that Faust shall woo Gretchen in their
mother-tongue?

But we, the ludicrous public, who snarl at the carpenter and shoemaker