science, politics,
manufactures, even in their most recent developments. "What is your
favorite type of aeroplane?" asked one some years ago in the
kindergarten days of cloud navigation. I told him that I had made no
choice, since I had never seen a flying machine, despite the fact that
I was a native of the country that gave it birth. He then vouchsafed his
opinions and entered into a physical and mechanical discussion of the
matter, indicating that he had spent hours in getting the whole subject
straightened out in his mind. This same man, a German, knew whole cantos
of the _Inferno_ by heart, and could repeat long scenes from _King Lear_
with a very creditable English accent.

The average American "tired business man" who is inclined to look upon
the touring virtuoso as "only a pianist" would be immensely surprised if
he were called upon to compare his store of "universal" information with
that of the performer. He would soon see that his long close confinement
behind the bars of the dollar sign had made him the intellectual
inferior of the musician he almost ignores. But it is hardly fair to
compare these famous interpreters with the average "tired business man."
They are the Cecil Rhodes, the Thomas Edisons, the Maurice Maeterlincks
of their fields. It is easy enough to find musicians of smaller life
opportunities basking in their ignorance and conceit.

While the virtuoso may be described as intellectual in the broader sense
of the term, he usually has a great fear of becoming academic. He
aspires to be artistic rather than scholarly. He strives to elevate
rather than to teach--in the strictly pedagogical sense. Some of the
greatest performers have been notoriously weak as teachers. They do not
seek the walls of the college, neither do they long for the cheap
_Bohemianism_ that so many of the French feuilletonists delight in
describing. (Why should the immorality of the artist's life be laid at
the doors of fair Bohemia?) The artist's life is wrapped up in making
his readings of master works more significant, more eloquent, more
beautiful. He is interested in everything that contributes to his
artistry, whether it be literature, science, history, art or the technic
of his own interpretative development. He penetrates the various mystic
problems which surround piano playing by the infallible process of
persistent study and reflection. The psychical phase of his work
interests him immensely, particularly the pheno