NOTEBOOK

Does the human being reason? No; he thinks, muses,
reflects, but doesn't reason. Thinks about a thing; re-
hearses its statistics and its parts and applies to them what
ether people on his side of the question have said about
then, but he does not compare the parts himself, and is
not capable of doing it.

That is, in the two things which are the peculiar domain
of the heart, not the mind,—politics and religion. He
doesn't want to know the other side. He wants arguments
and statistics for his own side, and nothing more.

Xov. 4 '96. Clara went with Mrs. Hopekirk Wilson
yesterday and saw a young English girl of 20 (pupil of
Leschetizky's) play before an audience for the first time.
The girl's name is Goodson. Clara says she is not pretty,
but has a most interesting face. She does not look Eng-
lish, but foreign—Russian, Clara thought. When she was
ready to go on the stage Mrs. Wilson found that her
hands were cold, from fright. She sent for hot water, but
the girl said "No! No! No! I can't touch it! I have inked
my master's initials on my nails as a talisman, and it
would wash off!"

By that time it was necessary that she go on at once;
and she did. She has a preternaturally grave face, and
Clara said airs from the churchyard seemed to sift over
the house as she stood solemnly glooming upon it from
her place by the piano. Came the hoarse whisper from
the prompter's hole "Bow, for God's sake bow\" She did
it—a little wee machine bow—the applause of welcome
crashing along all the time—for the audience (matinee,
and almost all ladies) doubtless knew what Leschetizky
had said about the girl—that she would be the greatest
of all women pianists. She sat down and played—and re-
tired under a splendid enthusiasm of applause and then
encore, and went back and stood glooming out over this
tossing sea of rejoicing noise. Hoarse whisper from the

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