“You know,” he said, “I dislike music. I don’t know what people mean in admiring it. I am very stupid, tone-deaf, as others are colour-blind. But,” he added, with some warmth, “to-night, when from a distance I heard you singing that song, I had an inkling of what people mean by music. Something came over me which I had never felt before; or, yes, I have felt it once before in my life.”
Jenny Lind was all attention.
“Some years ago,” he continued, “I was at Vienna, and one evening there was a tattoo before the palace performed by four hundred drummers. I felt shaken, and to-night while listening to your singing, the same feeling came over me. I felt deeply moved.”
“Dear man,” Jenny Lind used to say, when she told this story, “I know he meant well, and a more honest compliment I never received in all my life.”
Bad Temper.
“Of all bad things by which mankind are cursed
Their own bad temper surely is the worst.”
Cumberland.