“Very true,” said the musician, “I, too, seem to have a following of beasts.”
Carpenter and Weber
Some time ago I asked B, my carpenter, why he was so downhearted.
“Well,” said he, “you know, sir, that my son Franz was to have been a carpenter. He showed a good deal of talent for it, but now it’s all over.”
“How so?” I asked.
“It happened this way: We went to hear an opera the other night, and such music as we heard! The angels in heaven could not sing any better, and that music they said was made by one Weber. And now my boy won’t be anything else but just such a Weber” (Weaver).
Singing by Sight
To the manager of the opera at K. came one day a young girl to be examined for a position in the chorus. After she had sung a scale, he asked her among other questions if she could sing by sight, to which she replied: “Oh yes, if I know it by heart.”
“Are you at all musical?”
“Oh no; I am Catholic!”