_Tuesday._--No better. Consult another doctor, who's just taken his degree (in music) at Oxford, and is supposed to be very clever. He feels my pulse, and looks solemn. Then he asks if I've been giving way to Italian opera lately, and appears coldly sceptical when I explain that I have been taking it by medical advice. Prescribes essence of WAGNER, to be taken at short intervals. Begin by attending a RICHTER concert. Dr. RICHTER'S practice is said to be enormous, and every part of St. James's Hall is thronged by his patients.
_Wednesday._--Better. Receive a large number of patent medicine circulars--this kind of thing: "Try our Indigestion Waltzes! Warranted to cure. All headache, giddiness and faintness removed at first time of hearing." Here's another: "Dentists superseded! All sufferers from Toothache should attend Herr BOSKOWSKY'S course of Dental Piano Recitals. Worth a guinea a stall." I also learn that the Hirsutine Symphony cures baldness, and that the Pink Bavarian Band may be engaged to play "Slumber-Songs" to sufferers from insomnia.
_Thursday._--Am aroused by five barrel-organs performing simultaneously under my next-door neighbour's window. Send a note round suggesting they should be dispersed. Answer "Sorry to cause annoyance, but our youngest child is suffering from chickenpox, and has been ordered street-music every three hours." Go out to buy an air-gun. Later in the day, happening to take up the _Lancet_ at the Club, I find in it a long article on "The treatment of pleurisy by BEETHOVEN'S Fifth Symphony in C Minor."
_Friday._--Two seedy-looking men suddenly appear in the drawing-room after dinner to-night. Discover that they are "The Brothers TITTLEBAT" from the Abracadabra Music Hall, and that my wife has engaged them, by her doctor's orders, to sing comic songs every evening for a fortnight, in order to cure the depression of spirits from which she believes herself to be suffering. "The Brothers TITTLEBAT" seem to be suffering themselves from elevation of spirits--gin, to judge by the smell; kick them out, and decide to emigrate to-morrow.
_Gismonda_ is poor stuff. The selection was a mistake. Lucky man SARDOU to have SARA for heroine. Great is SARDOU and SARA is his profit! Splendid as ever, but genius wasted on _Gismonda_. She will be seen at her best in other dramas. Wonderful _artiste!_