Germany, on the banks of the romantic river Pilsen. To be sure, there
are no catfish and waffles _a la_ Schuylkill, but are there any to be
found today at Wissahickon? On the other hand, there is good cooking,
excellent beer and in all Schaumpfeffer, a town of nearly 3000 souls,
you won't find a man or woman who has heard of any composer later than
Haydn. They still dance to the music of Lanner and the elder Strauss;
Johann, Jr., is considered rather an iconoclast in his _Fledermaus_. I
carefully conceal the American papers, which are smuggled out to my
villa--Villa Scherzo it is called because life is such a joke,
especially music--and I read them and all modern books (that is, those
dating later than 1850) behind closed doors. Oh, I am so cheerful over
this heavenly relief from thrice-accursed "modernity." I'm old, I admit
(I still recall Kalkbrenner's pearly touch and Doehler's chalky tone),
but my hat is still on the piano top. In a word, I'm in the ring and
don't propose to stop writing till I die, and I shan't die as long as I
can hold a pen and protest against the tendencies of the times. Old Fogy
to the end!

I walk, I talk, I play Hummel, Bach, Mozart, and occasionally Stephen
Heller--he's a good substitute for the sickly, affected Chopin. I read,
read too much. Lately, I've been browsing in my musical library, a large
one as you well know, for I have been adding to it for the last two
decades and more by receiving the newest contributions to what is called
"musical literature." Well, I don't mind telling you that the majority
of books on music bore me to death. Particularly books containing
apochryphal stories of the lives of great composers or executive
musicians. Pshaw! Why I can reel off yarns by the dozen if I'm put to
it. Besides, the more one reads of the private lives of great musicians,
the more one's ideal of the fitness of things is shocked. Paderewski
putting a collar button in his shirt and swearing at his private
chaplain because some of the criticisms were underdone, is not half so
fearsome as Chopin with the boils, or Franz Schubert advertising in a
musical journal. After years of reading I have reached the conclusion
that the average musical Boswell is a fraud, a snare, a pitfall, and a
delusion. The way to go about being one is simple. First acquaint
yourself with a few facts in the lives of great musicians, then, on a
slim framework, plaster with fiction till the structure fairly trembles.
Ne