From the Easy Chair, Vol II of III

IN Germany on Sylvesterabend-the eve of Saint Sylvester, the last night of the year-you shall wake and hear a chorus of voices singing hymns, like the English waits at Christmas or the Italian pifferari. In the deep silence, and to one awakening, the music has a penetrating and indefinable pathos, the pathos that Richter remarked in all music, and which our own Parsons has hinted delicately-