n together with several of the
neighbors, and while I manipulated the stops and worked the pedals, they
all sat in silence, marveling at the cunning of the mechanism rather
than enjoying "The Ride of the Valkyries." However as I played some
simpler things, a song of MacDowells, a study by Grieg, my Uncle's head
bowed, and on his face came that somber brooding look which recalled to
me the moods of David, his younger brother, whose violin had meant so
much to me when as a boy, I lay before the fire and listened with sweet
Celtic melancholy to the wailing of its strings.

Something in these northern melodies sank deep into my mother's
inherited memories, also, and her eyes were wide and still with inward
vision, but my Aunt Susan said, "That's a fine invention, but I'd rather
hear you sing," and in this judgment Maria concurred. "It's grand," she
admitted, "but 'tain't like the human voice."

In the end I put the machine back in the corner and sang for them, some
of the familiar songs. The instrument was surprising and new and
wonderful but it did not touch the hearts of my auditors like "Minnie
Minturn" and "The Palace of the King."

On the day following I set the date of my departure and at the end of my
announcement mother sat in silence, her face clouded with pain, her eyes
looking away into space. She had nothing to say in opposition, not a
word--she only said, "If you're going I guess the quicker you start the
better."

CHAPTER SEVEN

London and Evening Dress

Confession must now be made on a personal matter of capital importance.
Up to my thirty-ninth year I had never worn a swallow-tail evening coat,
and the question of conforming to a growing sartorial custom was
becoming, each day, of more acute concern to my friends as well as to
myself.

My first realization of the differences which the lack of evening dress
can make in a man's career, came upon me clearly during the social stir
of the Columbian Exposition, for throughout my ten years' stay in Boston
I had accepted (with serene unconsciousness of the incongruity of my
action) the paradoxical theory that a "Prince Albert frock coat" was the
proper holiday or ceremonial garment of an American democrat. The
claw-hammer suit was to me, as to my fellow artist, "the livery of
privilege" worn only by monopolistic brigands and the poor parasites who
fawned upon and served them, whereas the double-breasted black coat,
royal, as its name denoted, was as