A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

Sunday.

There was a vast crowd in the public grounds that night

to hear the band play the “Fremersberg.” This piece tells

one of the old legends of the region; how a great noble

of the Middle Ages got lost in the mountains, and wandered

about with his dogs in a violent storm, until at last

the faint tones of a monastery bell, calling the monks

to a midnight service, caught his ear, and he followed

the direction the sounds came from and was saved.

A beautiful air ran through the music, without ceasing,

sometimes loud and strong, sometimes so soft that it

could hardly be distinguished–but it was always there;

it swung grandly along through the shrill whistling

of the storm-wind, the rattling patter of the rain,

and the boom and crash of the thunder; it wound soft

and low through the lesser sounds, the distant ones,

such as the throbbing of the convent bell, the melodious

winding of the hunter’s horn, the distressed bayings

of his dogs, and the solemn chanting of the monks;

it rose again, with a jubilant ring, and mingled itself

with the country songs and dances of the peasants assembled

in the convent hall to cheer up the rescued huntsman

while he ate his supper. The instruments imitated all

these sounds with a marvelous exactness. More than one

man started to raise his umbrella when the storm burst

forth and the sheets of mimic rain came driving by;

it was hardly possible to keep from putting your hand

to your hat when the fierce wind began to rage and shriek;

and it was NOT possible to refrain from starting when

those sudden and charmingly real thunder-crashes were

let loose.

I suppose the “Fremersberg” is a very low-grade music;

I know, indeed, that it MUST be low-grade music, because it

delighted me, warmed me, moved me, stirred me, uplifted me,

enraptured me, that I was full of cry all the time,

and mad with enthusiasm. My soul had never had such a

scouring out since I was born. The solemn and majestic

chanting of the monks was not done by instruments,

but by men’s voices; and it rose and fell, and rose again

in that rich confusion of warring sounds, and pulsing bells,

and the stately swing of that ever-present enchanting air,

and it seemed to me that nothing but the very lowest

of low-grade music COULD be so divinely beautiful.

The great crowd which the “Fremersberg” had called out was

another evidence that it was low-grade music; for only

the few are educated up to a point where high-grade music

gives pleasure. I have never heard enough classic music

to be able to enjoy it. I dislike the opera because I want

to love it and can’t.

I suppose there are two kinds of music–one kind which

one feels, just as an oyster might, and another sort

which requires a higher faculty, a faculty which must

be assisted and developed by teaching. Yet if base music

gives certain of us wings, why should we want any other?

But we do. We want it because the higher and better

like it. We want it without giving it the necessary

time and trouble; so we climb into that upper tier,

that dress-circle, by a lie; we PRETEND we like it.

I know several of that sort of people–and I propose

to be one of them myself when I get home with my fine

European education.

And then there is painting. What a red rag is to a bull,

Turner’s “Slave Ship” was to me, before I studied art.

Mr. Ruskin is educated in art up to a point where that

picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of pleasure

as it used to throw me into one of rage, last year,

when I was ignorant. His cultivation enables him–and me,

now–to see water in that glaring yellow mud, and natural

effects in those lurid explosions of mixed smoke and flame,

and crimson sunset glories; it reconciles him–and me,

now–to the floating of iron cable-chains and other

unfloatable things; it reconciles us to fishes swimming

around on top of the mud–I mean the water. The most of