How I wish you might see some of this queer congregation! The masculine element ranges from small boys to bearded men. The girls and men are kept strictly separate, like the sheep and the goats. They enter and go out by different doors, for the building is divided in two distinct sections. The sanctity of each section is kept as inviolate as a Shaker settlement.
The front row of tenors in the chorus amuses me exceedingly. It consists of boys who wear their hair pompadour and yell outrageously. Did you ever notice the effect of a boy with pompadour hair opening his mouth very wide? It is truly startling. The basses form a curious vis-à-vis for these youthful aspirants. Their age is in the neighborhood of thirty. Obviously to be a bass singer requires both dignity and experience. Most of them think it also requires a full beard. Several of the pupils affect the artistic, or are dressed after the old masters, with long hair, brown corduroy velvet jackets, and flowing neckties. There is one I have named Rubenstein, he looks so much like the pictures of the great pianist. And the most interesting tenor-boy I call Beethoven. He wears a big white collar into which he sinks his chin, and with deep, earnest eyes under closely knit brows gazes gravely out on a frivolous world.
I felt very much like the proverbial stray cat as I entered the room at the first rehearsal, alone and silent in all that crowd of chattering German girls. Not knowing where to sit, I cast an anxious look around and caught the friendly glance of a girl in the second row. She beckoned to me somewhat shyly.
"There is a place here, if you care for it," she said.
Overjoyed to hear my mother tongue, I gladly took the seat beside her, and we were soon chatting in the unconventional way known to strangers who meet on strange soil. I could not but notice with what a high-bred manner my new friend carried her head. Her hair, black and curling, is coiled in a low knot at the back of the whitest of necks, for she wears her blouses cut out a little without a collar, as is the strange and rather chilling fashion here. I was struck, too, by her jacket of black velvet, an odd school dress, but one which seems to suit her perfectly.
"You are English, are you not?" I questioned.
"Not at all," said she, her blue eyes snapping as much as blue eyes ever can snap. "I'm Irish. I come from County Cork."
"Oh!" I said, drawing a long breath, as visions of the representatives County Cork generally sends to America flashed through my mind.
"I'm taking piano as my Hauptsache with Krause," she went on. "You know Stavenhagen and Krause have a great many foreign pupils. By the bye," she continued, "I have a friend myself in the United States. I wonder if you know her—a Miss Curtis."
"Couldn't you tell me what city she lives in?" I suggested. "I know several people of that name."