The San Francisco call., 1898-08-14

but to no avail. One day it was hot and oppressive and Elvira felt indo- lent and unambitious. She had prac- ticed her CZerny over at least ten times until she could have played the thing by memory with her eyes shut. The windows were open to cool the room and the summer breezes blew gently in over her hot brow and she closed her eyes in a semi-drowsy state. No one was in the house but her mother and herself, and her moth CT was fast asleep upstairs.
 She settled herself comfortably down on the sofa in the spacious room and suddenly some one struck the piano. She opened her eyes No one was in the parlor but herself, and-the piano played some elegant chords all by it. self. For some strange reason EIVlra felt no especial inclination to get up and see what this meant, and so she just opened her eyes and watched. Her hearing was very acute, and she thought she must be dreaming. But, no, she wasn't.
 The piano was beginning to play the prelude to "The Mermaids' Valse"- that hateful old prelude which she couldn't understand and in which she found herself so often mixed. She had thought 1t the honeliest thing In the musical line that she had ever heard -Dul HON SllS LIOuSlib u Ne'C fSAJ pretty. Then strange transformation took place. Looking down at the floor she saw she was no longer on Brus- sels carpet with circular patterns on 1t, but that the waves rolled over the floor in a soft, purling fashion, and that her couch was no longer sofa chair, but a boat She closed her eyes in bliss as she heard the ripplfng mu sic of the piano pouring out of 1t cease lessly. She opened her eyes again. Her boat was slowly rocking forward over the waters past what had once been a center table, but was now rock. On it sat three mermaids, combing their long yellow locks and gazing at themselves in ivory mirrors, mean while singing-or was 1t the piano?- the air of "The Mermaids' Valse?"
 Then they faded from view, and she was sitting in theater all by herself. All was dark around her, but before was a large stage. brilliantly illumined and gayly festooned. Rubbing her dazed eyes she saw-oh! what was that-a dainty little creature, much like stray rose leaf, bound on to the stage as the piano was playing the beautiful strains of Leo Delibes' 'Pizzicati." Calcium lights from above threw on her little form all the colors of the rainbow, and her beautiful white, gauZy garments rose and fell like the wings of some great tropical butterfly and wound themselves into fiamelike folds. So graceful and startlingly beautiful! Such flashing blue eyes; such mist of golden hair like the spun sunbeams flying around her like a stray web! Then the scene changed. Elvira was out in the forest under the sweet smelling pines and deep shadowing oaks. The moon was high and the stars were bright, but here there was sense of mystery.
 The piano was playing Mendelssohn's Midsummer Nights Dream Fairy forms fitted here and there, clad in silvery eerie webs. Elfish faces peered at her from beneath the shrubbery, and bats darted everywhere. Not far distant, away in wild glee, danced the fairies in a magic ring, and their sil- very echoing song broke the stiffness of the midnight air. Then they all arose and circled about her. Then the tune changed and the scene " -.ished.
 She was in Scotland now. DumDty- dumpty- -dumpty- -dumpty. The stac- cato notes of the Highland fling came shriiIy to her ear and she looked about to find where they came from The piano she still heard. There was no other music, but it surely sounded like a bagpipe. A group of q dozen or so of merry Highlanders, pie turesque in their sturdy grace and pe-