Read Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 22 for Free Online Page B

whose multiple pipes and horns were arranged in the shape of a life-sized dinosaur skeleton.
    Beauchamp's creations were intimidatingly grandiose, but Nile strove for more subtlety. He discovered “empathy chords,” tones so striking or moving that listeners invariably reacted orally, with sighs or screams, on hearing them. His infamous “Asylum” cycle, which a young Charles Ives described as “uniquely disturbing,” gained much of its musical effect from the unwitting, or at least unwilling, collaboration of its own audience, whose shrieks and moans provided a basso continuo beneath the wailing of the chorus.
    Nile tinkered endlessly with his compositions. For the last performance of “Asylum,” he had each audience member sing a note on entering the custom-built concert hall in order to seat them with others who were like-voiced. Then by piping particular empathy chords to various parts of the hall he was able to elicit the appropriate screams in the soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass registers. Beauchamp's papers tell us that his and Nile's eccentric beloved attended the concert but would not sit in her assigned soprano section, moving instead behind a group of visiting Southerners, which caused Nile's emotions to blossom from nervousness into the furious jealousy that so marked the evening. Whether through accident or design, one of the tourists, a gentleman from Tennessee, was seated at the precise confluence of the hall's terrible acoustic power. He suffered punctured eardrums and a permanent change in personality, his former sweet nature giving way to snarling cynicism.
    Clement Beauchamp, determined to end the rivalry by conducting the ultimate musical concert, composed what he named “The Infinity,” a five hour and seven minute long grand opera that was to be performed, starting at noon, on the 1st of July, 1898, by the entire Eastern seaboard. Four years went into the composition and distribution of the myriad parts to each town and township, along with copious notes on when and how each vocal subset was to begin their singing. He dedicated his work to “Elijah Nile, a fine joiner of notes.” Wallace Byrd, a newspaperman from Hawthorne County, Virginia, whom Beauchamp invited to hear the concert, wrote of the occasion:
    The expression on the Maestro's face is one of tragically innocent anticipation. He has assured me that the summit of Lully Hill is the best location from which to hear the concert, although, one must admit, the lowering storm clouds in the east offer cause for concern. The great quantity of food, apparently packed, but not, thus far, offered, leads one to wonder, is another guest expected?
    And later, recording the approach of twelve, and the light rainfall that filled the afternoon and continued into the evening, Byrd wrote:
    The Maestro sits cross-legged on the sodden blanket, his face lifted to the rain-choked sky, a rapturous expression borne upon his face. His hand moves with a languid, quite beautiful motion, as if conducting phantoms, and I cannot distinguish the tears from the raindrops flowing down his cheeks. He speaks at times, in a whisper. “Ah,” he might say, “the Maryland basses, entering with a wonderful precision,” or, “I had worried, writing the Charleston sopranos such a difficult descant, but needlessly! They are perfection itself, a glory that verges on heavenly,” or, simply, “Listen, sir, listen, I am vindicated, listen!” However I strain, I myself can hear nothing but muffled thunder and the susurrus of rain in the the wet grass.
    Beauchamp took ill, and from his sickbed demanded to see newspapers from every town to which he'd sent music. Several seemed to mention “The Infinity” in brief paragraphs that mocked his hubris. These he clipped out and assembled into one article, which he tacked to the wall at the end of his bed. From a distance of several yards, and through his feverish eyes, the motley page looked much like bona fide