His single thought was to keep in front of the
movement, and, if necessary, lead it to chaos, but never fall
behind. Only the young have time to linger in the rear.
The amusements of youth had to be abandoned, for not even
pugilism needs more staying-power than the labors of the
pale-faced student of the Latin Quarter in the haunts of
Montparnasse or Montmartre, where one must feel no fatigue at two
o'clock in the morning in a beer- garden even after four hours of
Mounet Sully at the Theatre Francais. In those branches,
education might be called closed. Fashion, too, could no longer
teach anything worth knowing to a man who, holding open the door
into the next world, regarded himself as merely looking round to
take a last glance of this. The glance was more amusing than any
he had known in his active life, but it was more -- infinitely
more -- chaotic and complex.
Still something remained to be done for education beyond the
chaos, and as usual the woman helped. For thirty years or
there-abouts, he had been repeating that he really must go to
Baireuth. Suddenly Mrs. Lodge appeared on the horizon and bade
him come. He joined them, parents and children, alert and eager
and appreciative as ever, at the little old town of
Rothenburg-on-the Taube, and they went on to the Baireuth
festival together.
Thirty years earlier, a Baireuth festival would have made an
immense stride in education, and the spirit of the master would
have opened a vast new world.
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