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artistic conscience. The latter word caused a sleepy, fat man with spectacles to wake up. "Conscience, who said conscience? Is there such a thing in art any more?" I was delighted for the backing of a stranger, but he calmly ignored me and continued: "Newspapers rule the musical world, and woe betide the artist who does not submit to his masters. Conscience, pooh-pooh! Boodle, lots of it, makes most artistic reputations. A pianist is boomed a year ahead, like Paderewski, for instance. Paragraphs subtly hinting of his enormous success, or his enormous hair, or his enormous fingers, or his enormous technic----" "Give us a _fermata_ on your enormous story, Jenkins. Every one knows you are disgruntled because the _Whiplash_ attacks your judgment." This from another journalist. Jenkins looked sourly at my friend Sledge, but that shy young person behaved most nonchalantly. He whistled and offered Jenkins a cigar. It was accepted. I was disgusted, and then they all fell to quarreling over Tchaikovsky. I listened with amazement. "Tchaikovsky," I heard, "Tchaikovsky is the last word in music. His symphonies, his symphonic poems, are a superb condensation of all that Beethoven knew and Wagner felt. He has ten times more technic for the orchestra than Berlioz or Wagner, and it is a pity he was a suicide--" "How," I cried, "Tchaikovsky a suicide?" They didn't even answer me. "He might have outlived the last movement of that B-minor symphony, the suicide symphony, and if he had we would have had another ninth symphony." I arose indignant at such blasphemy, but was pushed back in my seat by Sledge. "What a pity Beethoven did not live to hear a man who carried to its utmost the expression of the emotions!" I now snorted with rage, Sledge could no longer control me. "Yes, gentlemen," I shouted; "utmost expression of the emotions, but what sort of emotions? What sort, I repeat, of shameful, morbid emotions?" The table was quiet again; a single word had caught it. "Oh, Mr. Fogy, you are not so very Wissahickon after all, are you? You know the inside story, then?" cried Sledge. But I would not be interrupted. I stormed on. "I know nothing about any story and don't care to know it. I come of a generation of musicians that concerned itself little with the scandals and private life of composers, but lots with their music and its meanings." "Go it, Fogy," called out Sledge, hammering the table with his seidl. "I believe tha
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