34 The Sort of Life We Lead 



dead pine overgrown with silvery moss; took a saw 

 along and brought home a lot with which to deco- 

 rate ; picked up some wonderful grasses of a kind 

 unknown to me, which we found growing to a 

 height of seven feet in a sort of half swamp, half 

 bog. Growing dark early, but not cold enough for 

 our fire. Looked up and read some chapters on 

 wild grasses, and wrote some private letters. S. 

 gave us some reminiscences of Die Meistersinger 

 on the piano, and A. sang some Schubert songs. 



The talk this evening ran upon the future of 

 music in New York, and, while in J. we had a de- 

 voted believer in the grandeur and importance of 

 our musical future, S. was entirely sceptical, and 

 believed that whether or not the Wagner wave had 

 a more solid foundation than passing fashion, the 

 real love of music was not deep enough to encour- 

 age the hope of a permanent opera, such as exists 

 in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, and half-a-dozen other 

 German cities. The idea that the love of Wagner's 

 music is, so to speak, fictitious, and the professions 

 of the Wagner enthusiasts merely due to the ex- 

 traneous influence of the moment, I hear a good 

 deal about, but can never take quite seriously. 

 One of my friends insists that the more violent the 

 craze for Wagnerism, the sooner it will be over, and 



