have told the difference between a sonata and a sonnet to save their souls, men who spent all their lives in manufacturing tea-cups or china door-knobs, were invited to guarantee five pounds a-piece against possible loss on the festival; and they bravely and blindly did so.  The conductor of the largest Hanbridge choir, being appointed to conduct the preliminary rehearsals of the Festival Chorus, had an acute attack of self-importance, which, by the way, almost ended fatally a year later.

Double-crown posters appeared magically on all the hoardings announcing that a Festival consisting of three evening and two morning concerts would be held in the Alexandra Hall, at Hanbridge, on the 6th, 7th and 8th November, and that the box-plan could be consulted at the principal stationers.  The Alexandra Hall contained no boxes whatever, but “box-plan” was the phrase sacred to the occasion, and had to be used.  And the Festival more and more impregnated the air, and took the lion’s share of the columns of the Staffordshire Signal.  Every few days the Signal reported progress, even to intimate biographical details of the singers engaged, and of the composers to be performed, together with analyses of the latter’s works.  And at last the week itself had dawned in exhilaration and excitement.  And early on the day before the opening day John Merazzi, the renowned conductor, and Herbert Millwain, the renowned leader of the orchestra, and the renowned orchestra itself, all arrived from London.  And finally sundry musical critics arrived from the offices of sundry London dailies.  The presence of these latter convinced an awed population that its Festival was a real Festival, and not a local make-believe.  And it also tranquillized in some degree the exasperating and disconcerting effect of a telegram from the capricious Countess of Chell (who had taken six balcony seats and was the official advertised high patroness of the Festival) announcing at the last moment that she could not attend.

III

Mrs Swann’s justification for considering (as she in fact did consider) that her son was either the base or the apex of the splendid pyramid of the Festival lay in the following facts:—­

From earliest infancy Gilbert had been a musical prodigy, and the circle of his fame had constantly been extending.  He could play the piano with his hands before his legs were long enough for him to play it with his feet.  That is to say, before he could use the pedals.  A spectacle formerly familiar to the delighted friends of the Swanns was Gilbert, in a pinafore and curls, seated on a high chair topped with a large Bible and a bound volume of the Graphic, playing “Home Sweet Home” with Thalberg’s variations, while his mother, standing by his side on her right foot, put the loud pedal on or off with her left foot according to the infant’s whispered orders.  He had been allowed to play from ear—­playing