If, then, if it were to be true that Josephine doesn't sing but just whistles, and indeed, as it seems to me, that her whistling barely exceeds the bounds of the ordinary, that really her powers in whistling don't even extend into the triumphant sort mentioned earlier whereas the whistling of our typical laborer, someone who is quite down to earth and who whistles the whole day long without any particular effort, that this just goes hand in hand with his earthly travails, well, if all of this were to be true then, indeed, Josephine's purported artistry would be refuted-but now, first and foremost, now we'd have to face up to this riddle as to why it is that her performances are so electrifying! And really, when you get right down to it, it's not merely whistling, this is not everything that Josephine exhibits in her performances-you need only place yourself in the back of the auditorium and listen attentively... or, better yet, test this out in the following manner: if Josephine is singing amongst a group of others and if you should give yourself the task of making her voice out from amongst these others then without fail you won't be able to distinguish anything else but a typical, middle-of-the-road sort of whistling that, at the most, is a bit sweeter or somehow softer and this is the only distinguishing characteristic that you might hear. But then, if you stand there in front of her so it's not merely whistling, there's yet another component that's absolutely required if one is to understand her art properly, namely that you don't merely listen to her, rather you also have to see her. Even if it were to be nothing more than our everyday whistling, still there's this oddity of how she presents herself, the drama and theatrics of her performance-that someone would put on such airs and then do nothing more than what's typical, the ordinary, middle-of-the-road sort of whistling. Cracking pecans doesn't entail any particular artistry, none whatsoever, hence nobody would be so daring as to gather up an audience and then for his performance that he would shell a pound of pecans. But, all the same, if one were to do just this and if one's performance were to be a great success, well then, obviously it couldn't possibly simply be a matter of cracking nuts! Or maybe it does have something to do with nut-cracking but it suddenly has become apparent that there's more to cracking nuts than meets the eye, that we've been overlook-ing something because we just happen to be so good at it and that only now its innermost essence has been put up on display whereby it is even quite conceivable that this might be a distinct advantage and quite useful, namely that the artist performing such a feat isn't really all that good at cracking nuts to begin with. Perhaps just this is the proper correlation for our appreciation of Josephine's musical performances: that we stand in awe before her for doing something that we do all the time ourselves without being amazed in the least. In any event, we're all on her side, we find ourselves totally 'at one' with her and we agree about this. Once I was present as somebody- as only might be expected-somebody was pointing out to her how our folk in general tend to whistle, and he was quite modest and matter of fact in how he brought this up, like if someone would have been talking to somebody who is rich and might mention by the way that although he isn't rich himself, all the same, he isn't starving, and that by mentioning this one isn't trying to hurt this well- heeled lolloper at all, that rather he should go ahead and enjoy his wealth without any worries about it.