mischievous“One in 50 of those who attend our operas likes it already, perhaps, but I think a good many of other 49 go in order to learn to like it, and the rest in order to be able to talk knowingly about it. The latter usually hum the airs while they are being sung, so that their neighbors may perceive that they have been to operas before. The funeral of these do not occur often enough.”
“To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, “Our country, right or wrong,” and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?”
“We like to read about rich people in the newspapers; the papers know it, and they do their best to keep this appetite liberally fed.”
