nique, but acquaintance with a
music critic who cannot hum a tune, and with a celestial tenor (such
tenors are so rare I fear this may be too personal for print) who was
the most stupid of men, without the slightest capacity for high
passion of any sort, convinced me of my error: and many subsequent
conversations with men and women like myself incapacitated by nature
for self-expression, as well as much listening to bad singers with
good voices, have but forced conviction home. And now, when unfeeling
relatives and scoffing friends smile the superior smile of the
"musically talented" at sight of my piano which I play with one
finger, and at the pile of music upon it, I let them smile, calm in
the assurance that songs and instrument are mine by better right,
perhaps, than theirs, who can raise voices quite on pitch to the
accompaniment of eight fingers and two thumbs.

For, when none of them is by, I play with my one finger the airs of
the world's great _lieder_, and hear from that slight suggestion the
songs as they should be sung. As I would rather read _Hamlet_ in my
library than see the average actor attempt the part, so I would rather
play _Der Atlas_ with one finger, with my own imagination calling
forth the tragic power and grief, the superb climax of surprise and
thunder, than hear it sung by any man at present on the concert stage.
The poignant sadness cross-shot with humor of another of Schubert's
songs, _The Hurdy Gurdy_, vanishes in the concert room, melts
hopelessly into the dulcet tones of the young lady soprano, whose
friends titter when she is done, "What a pretty song." But my
one-fingered rendering--aided in this song by occasional jabs with
three fingers of the left hand--brings to my inward ear the pathos of
the barrel-organ, heard over the distant hum of a careless city, laden
with the sorrow of all the world; brings memories, too, of that
consummate singer of songs, Marcella Sembrich. Under the touch of my
blunt forefinger the songs of MacDowell distill their delicate
melancholy, that in the homes of my friends, where daughters ripple
well-dusted piano keys and display expensive voices, yield only
treacle and honey. Why should I mind the supercilious smile of my
neighbor next door when he occasionally catches me at my unidigital
performance, he who is a soloist in a noted church choir, but who, I
very well know, prefers _The Palms_ or _Over There_ to Purcell's _I'll
sail upon the Dog Star_, if, in