The Song and the Singer
by Frederick Russell Burton (9780217284028)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IL There is no friend like the old friend. ?Oliver Wendell Holmes. From force of habit Ordway awoke early. There had been dreams of heavenly choirs and diabolical orchestras; he had been alternately on the stage and off it; and once he had swung the baton while a beautiful girl in blue tights sang of love and flowers. The awakening from these confusions was wholly agreeable. He laughed as he reviewed such hazy fragments as clung to his memory, and his heart swelled with renewed delight as he went clearly over the opera he had actually heard. Was there anything in the world that could equal it? Certainly, emphatically, not What could the smart writers mean who spoke disparagingly of Gounod? Had they forgotten "Faust"? Ordway wrought himself into something akin to rage while he was dressing and thinking over the detractions of the Frenchman's genius that had come his way. He would like to answer such fellows as they deserved. The melancholy of midnight had fled before splendid exaltation and a wholesome physical appetite. He ate the heartiest kind of a breakfast and went forth to see the town. It was not wholly unfamiliar to him. He knew the way, and he presented himself early at the ticket office of a hall where a famous pianist was to give a recital in the evening. Not again would he take the risk of finding all the desirable places in the gallery pre-empted by early comers. At that, his diligence was rewarded by nothing better than a place nearly as close to the roof as he had been the evening before; but that place was secured, and he was content. He journeyed downtown, walked across the great bridge and back, and about noon shot skyward in an elevator to the editorial rooms of a newspaper. "Well ?" said the uncommonly severe youth whose duty it was to ...

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