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You wanted to know the incident of The Music Room: 

I encountered a friend and confessed that I enjoyed all the Whistlers at the Comparative Exhibition but felt I had not (then) quite grasped the Music Room. The friend - a business man, fond of paintings yet in no sense a student - immediately replied: 

"Why I understood that more easily, more completely than any other picture of his." 

"Indeed!" said I, surprised.

"Yes," said he, "the pathos was so great!

"Pathos!" I repeated, wondering.

"Yes, don't you see," he went on, "there was the richly dressed lady just going out for a ride and the poor seamstress looking up at her face, and such a sad, sweet face it was, so full of yearning. Why I could have cried. She looked positively hungry."

I felt that although I may not have quite grasped it, I was not quite so far afield as my perfectly convinced and satisfied friend. 

Annie Nathan Meyer.

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