There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand piano.  There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge with the running of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to see what you are hearing and to hear what you are seeing.

There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to a sparkling sea.  The air about such a woman is bracing, and when she is near you, you feel strong and ambitious; you forget that the world doesn’t like you.  You think that perhaps you are a great fellow, after all.  Then you come away and feel like a boy who has fallen in love with his Sunday-school teacher.  You’ll be whipped for it—­and ought to be.

There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon.  But they do not have the “Greek profile.”  I do not believe Helen of Troy had a “Greek profile”; they would not have fought about her if her nose had been quite that long.  The Greek nose is not the adorable nose.  The adorable nose is about an eighth of an inch shorter.

Much of the music of Wagner, it appears, is not suitable to the piano.  Wagner was a composer who could interpret into music such things as the primitive impulses of humanity—­he could have made a machine-shop into music.  But not if he had to work in it.  Wagner was always dealing in immensities—­a machine-shop would have put a majestic lump in so grand a gizzard as that.

There is a mystery about pianos, it seems.  Sometimes they have to be “sent away.”  That is how some people speak of the penitentiary.  “Sent away” is a euphuism for “sent to prison.”  But pianos are not sent to prison, and they are not sent to the tuner—­the tuner is sent to them.  Why are pianos “sent away”—­and where?

Sometimes a glorious day shines into the most ordinary and useless life.  Happiness and beauty come caroling out of the air into the gloomy house of that life as if some stray angel just happened to perch on the roof-tree, resting and singing.  And the night after such a day is lustrous and splendid with the memory of it.  Music and beauty and kindness—­those are the three greatest things God can give us.  To bring them all in one day to one who expected nothing—­ah! the heart that received them should be as humble as it is thankful.  But it is hard to be humble when one is so rich with new memories.  It is impossible to be humble after a day of glory.

  Yes—­the adorable nose is more than an eighth of an inch shorter
  than the Greek nose.  It is a full quarter of an inch shorter.

  There are women who will be kinder to a sick tramp than to a
  conquering hero.  But the sick tramp had better remember that’s
  what he is.  Take care, take care!  Humble’s the word!

CHAPTER XVII