this quaint, old-fashioned music, with its faint odor
of the _rococo_, is of more satisfying musical value than all your
modern gymnasiums. Of what use, pray, is your superabundant technics if
you can't make music? Training your muscles and memorizing, you say?
Fiddlesticks! The _Well-tempered Clavichord_ for one hour a day is of
more value to a pianist technically and musically than an army of
mechanical devices.

"I never see a latter-day pianist on his travels but I am reminded of a
comedian with his rouge-pot, grease-paints, wigs, arms, and costumes.
Without them, what is the actor? Without his finger-boards and
exercising machines, what is the pianist of today? He fears to stop a
moment because his rival across the street will be able to play the
double-thirds study of Chopin in quicker _tempo_. It all hinges on
velocity. This season there will be a race between Rosenthal and Sauer,
to see who can vomit the greater number of notes. Pleasing, laudable
ambition, is it not? In my time a piano artist read, meditated, communed
much with nature, slept well, ate and drank well, saw much of society,
and all his life was reflected in his play. There was sensibility--above
all, sensibility--the one quality absent from the performances of your
new pianists. I don't mean super-sickly emotion, nor yet sprawling
passion--the passion that tears the wires to tatters, but a poetic
sensibility that infused every bar with humanity. To this was added a
healthy tone that lifted the music far above anything morbid or
depressing."

I continued in this strain until the dinner-bell rang, and I had to
invite my guests to remain. Indeed, I was not sorry, for all old men
need some one to talk to and at, else they fret and grow peevish.
Besides, I was anxious to put my young masters to the test. I have a
grand piano of good age, with a sounding-board like a fine-tempered
fiddle. The instrument, an American one, I handle like a delicate
thoroughbred horse, and, as my playing is accomplished by the use of my
fingers and not my heels, the piano does not really betray its years.

We dined not sumptuously but liberally, and with our pipes and coffee
went to the music room. The lads, excited by my criticisms and good
cheer, were eager for a demonstration at the keyboard. So was I. I let
them play first. This is what I heard: The dark-skinned youth, who
looked like the priestly and uninteresting Siloti, sat down and began
idly preluding. He had go