Embarrassing enough as it is to doze off during a concert, it is worse when one is recognized, as was Horace Greeley at a Rubinstein concert. The famous editor was a presidential candidate in 1872 running against the unbeatable incumbent Ulysses S. Grant. He was undoubtedly exhausted by the presidential campaign ("I was assailed so bitterly that I hardly knew whether I was running for the presidency or the penitentiary," he recalled before his death later that year), and Rubinstein's playing "transported him to the land of dreams," as a music journal reported. "At first he began to nod . . . and in spite of the suggestive nudges and pinches of his two daughters, who graced his presence on either hand, and the telegraphic despatches that arrived from time to time, and were thrust into his listless hand, he succumbed to the omnipotent strains of Rubinstein. . . . In his ecstatic trance his audible breathing was a comforting assurance to the myriads who look to him to save the country that he still lived."

A few months later an elaborate spoof on slumbering concertgoers appeared in the New York Weekly Review under the title "Nature's Sweet Restorer," making it clear that Greeley was not alone in his misery.

At nearly every concert where the better class of music is performed you may see somebody asleep. . . . The oratorio, the Thomas Symphony concerts, the Rubinstein concerts, all are attended with great regularity by faithful slumberers. . . .

The fact is that music—especially instrumental music—does have a somnolent effect. The performer, kept awake by his active participation in it, does not comprehend the sufferings of his listeners and is apt to attribute to stupidity what is generally the result of heat and foul air. . . .

There is something, after all, very delightful in going to sleep at a concert. But for the sense of guilt which the sleeper feels at first, it would be perfect bliss. How easily the eyes close! How gently the head falls back! How pleasantly the wandering thoughts compose themselves to oblivion! How charmingly the droning of the violins soothes and calms the senses!

But then there is the awful shame of waking up! There is the fall backward or forward, the dazed opening of the eyes, the furtive glance cast about to see if you are observed, the spasmodic burst of applause to show that you have after all enjoyed "that lovely passage" exceedingly . . .

Then there are five minutes of keen critical attention, a falling off in interest, a closing of eyes, a blissful blank, and you are awakened to a sound of applause, and vacantly stare at the conductor bowing his thanks, and have an awful consciousness that something is wrong—that you have been asleep again!

The writer then suggested that the "sleepy folks who go to concerts" should form a secret society and give a "Slumber Concert," where it would be proper etiquette to go to sleep and any person planning to stay awake should be excluded. At the end of the concert and a "refreshing slumber," the audience would "congratulate itself, and after mutually remarking, ‘What a delightful nap we have had!' would disperse in a sweet and amiable frame of mind."