; dear old Rubinstein, the friend, alas,
I lost all too soon--grand old Rubinstein, the master whose magic touch
swept the keyboard as the hurricane sweeps the plain--could conjure up
visions of a misty past in my mind. "My father, my father," I could have
cried, as the Erl-king of Pianists pursued the doomed child with his
giant strides and unrelenting touch, alternately letting loose the
elements to rage in maddening tumult, and drawing uncanny whispers from
his weird instrument.

Whatever I may have been prompted to cry when under the spell of
Rubinstein's art, I do not think I invoked my father's aid on that night
upon the heath; it was more likely "My mother, my mother," I called, and
she just protected me, and so, fortunately for me, it all ended happily,
and: "In her arms the child was _not_ dead," but cried itself to sleep,
and was put back into the little hammock that was slung across from side
to side of our old-fashioned vehicle, and that temporarily replaced my
cradle in 3 Chester Place, Regent's Park, London, the house I was born
in.

My father was on a concert tour in Germany, reaping laurels and golden
harvests, such as were rarely heard of in those days. From his wife he
never parted if he could help it, even for a short time, and by way of
an encumbrance he had on this occasion taken, besides the necessary
luggage, us children--I think there were three of us then--and a little
dumb keyboard on which he used to exercise his fingers to keep them up
to concert pitch when pianos were out of reach. I hadn't seen any of
those little finger-trainers for years, when I came across one on Robert
Browning's writing-table; he always kept it by his side, and I wondered
whether he used it to stimulate the fingers that had to keep pace with
the poet's ever-flowing thoughts. But my earliest recollections are
connected, not with dumb keyboards, but with very full-sounding and
eloquent ones. My father was ever happiest when at the piano or
composing. He was interested, oh yes, much interested in the sister
arts, in science and politics, but he had a way of disappearing after a
while when such matters were being discussed, or of getting lost when we
had set out conscientiously to do museums or churches in Venice or
Antwerp, or to visit crypts, shrines, bones of ancestors, and other
historical relics above and below ground. We knew we should find him at
home at the piano, or pen in hand composing, that is, if he had not