Better dismiss me, now. I've told the truth,
And may continue that unseemly practice."
_MacStrakosch_.
"This is past bearing. Are there any more
Of these rude fellows waiting to be summoned?"
_Thunder. Eight apparitions of critics rise and pass over the stage,
reciting the following chorus:
Apparitions_.
"She has a pretty little voice, and uses it
In pretty little ways. If she would sing
In pretty little theatres she'd make a hit
In pretty little parts. That's everything
That can be said for her. Cease then to claim
That "KELLOGG" should be writ next GRISI'S name."
_The apparitions vanish. An alarm of drums is heard, and_ MATADOR
_awakes to find that he is still enduring Poliuto, and that a sporadic
drum in the orchestra, which has broken loose from the weak restraints
of the conductor's discipline, is making Verdi unnecessarily hideous._
And as he passed once more and finally through the lobby, he heard a
critic remark, "She is the same in everything she sings;" and another
reply, "Yes, she has a pretty little voice, and uses it nicely, but she
is by no means a great singer." Struck by the similarity of these
remarks to those made by the apparitions in his vision, he began to
doubt whether his dream did not, after all, contain a large alloy of
truth, and the more he thought on the subject the more he was led to
believe that for once he had really heard the critics of the New York
press indulging in an unrestrained expression of honest opinion.
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