And she does sing, with that voice so matchless in its perfect purity,
that even the disappointed critic grows uneasy as he tries in vain to
find some reasonable fault with it. She ceases, and amid wild cheers
from the paying part of the audience, silent approval from the
deadheads, and shouts of "Hooroo!" and "Begorra!" from the Scandinavian
Society, MAX'S flowers are brought in solemn procession up the aisle,
and laid at the feet of the Improved Nightingale.
CRITIC. "Those flowers will just be taken out of the back door, and
brought in again to be used the second time. There's a hand-cart waiting
for them now, at the Fifteenth Street entrance."
SIX PRIME DONNE, _(who were not asked to sing at the NILSSON concerts.)_
"Well, did you ever hear 'Angels Ever Bright' sung in a more atrocious
style? If that is NILSSON's idea of expression, the sooner she leaves
the stage to artists, the better."
CYNICAL OLD MUSICIAN. "Bah! NILSSON infuses religious sentiment into her
singing, and these envious creatures don't know what religious sentiment
is, so they think she is all wrong. If she had sung HANDEL with a smile,
and a coquettish tossing of her head, they would still have hated her,
but they would not have ventured to call her "inartistic.""
YOUNG MAN. "Darling! I had rather hear your sweet voice, than listen to
NILSSON or a choir of angels for the rest of my--"
YOUNG LADY. "CHARLES, you will drive me wild, with your intolerable
spooniness. I'll never come out with you again. See how the SMITH girls
are looking at you."
RURAL PERSON. "--So I says to the usher, 'If you think I'm a countryman
who don't know what's what, you're everlastingly sold.' 'I'm from
Philadelphy,' says I, 'and we've got singers there that can knock spots
out of your NILLOGGS and KELSONS and the rest of 'em.' So he just--"
RIVAL MANAGER. "My tear fellow, you shust mind dis. MAX vill lose all
his monish. NILSSON can't sing, my tear! She vanted me to encage her a
year ago, but I vouldn't do it. Dere ish no monish in her, now you mind
vot I says."
DISTINGUISHED TEACHER. "You call her an artist! Why, look here, if one
of my scholars were to phrase as wretchedly as she does, I'd never show
my face in public again. Her voice is so-so, but her school is simply
infamous."
CELEBRATED TEACHER. "Well, I don't mind saying that I never heard her
equal in point of quality of voice. She gives you pure tone, which is
what hardly any other singer does."
NINE TENTHS OF THE AUDIENCE. "She is perfectly lovely. There never was
anybody like her."
CONNOISSEUR, _(who really does know something about music, but who
actually has no prejudices.)_ "Her voice is such a one as MARGARET must
have had when she sang by her spinning-wheel, before fate threw her in
the way of FAUST. And these professional musicians will tear her
reputation to pieces among themselves! Why should musical people be, of
all others, most fond of discord?"
CRITIC. "There! those fools are determined to make her sing again. I
can't stand this. I'll see MAX once more, and if he don't do the right
thing, I'll say that NILSSON was played out in Europe before she came
here, and that she is a complete failure."