The whole school, except those whose parents struck at the expense, were taken up to Mr. Kuhe's yearly Grand Benefit Concert; there for the only time in my life I heard Patti, and, strange incomprehensible fact, what struck me most was her coquettish way of trotting on to the platform, followed by a display of ecstatic surprise at the plaudits that lifted the roof an experience as common to her as the sun rising. The other day, genuinely overwhelmed by her incomparable rendering of "Voi che sapete" on the gramophone, it was bitter to reflect I had once heard the real woman and cannot recall the ghost of a thrill. Was it my childish contempt for florid music - she sang something by Donizetti, I think - combined with insane dislike of affectation even as innocent and ritualistic as hers, or does some spiteful god amuse himself by turning us deaf and stupid for a while?