five years, though his original plan
had only contemplated a tour of two years. It must not be supposed that
Gottschalk devoted his time continually to concert performances and
composition, though he by no means neglected the requirements of
musical labor. As he himself confesses, the balmy climate, the glorious
landscapes, the languid _dolce far niente_, which tended to enervate
all that came under their magic spell, wrought on his susceptible
temperament with peculiar effect. A quotation from an article written by
Gottschalk, and published in the "Atlantic Monthly," entitled "Notes of
a Pianist," will furnish the reader a graphic idea of the influence
of tropical life on such an imaginative and voluptuous character,
passionately fond of nature and outdoor life: "Thus, in succession, I
have visited all the Antilles--Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Swedish,
and Danish; the Guianas, and the coasts of Para. At times, having become
the idol of some obscure _pueblo_, whose untutored ears I had charmed
with its own simple ballads, I would pitch my tent for five, six, eight
months, deferring my departure from day to day, until finally I began
seriously to entertain the idea of remaining there for evermore.
Abandoning myself to such influences, I lived without care, as the bird
sings, as the flower expands, as the brook flows, oblivious of the past,
reckless of the future, and sowed both my heart and my purse with the
ardor of a husbandman who hopes to reap a hundred ears for every grain
he confides to the earth. But, alas! the fields where is garnered the
harvest of expended doubloons, and where vernal loves bloom anew, are
yet to be discovered; and the result of my prodigality was that, one
fine morning, I found myself a bankrupt in heart, with my purse
at ebb-tide. Suddenly disgusted with the world and myself, weary,
discouraged, mistrusting men (ay, and women too), I fled to a desert on
the extinct volcano of M------, where, for several months, I lived the
life of a cenobite, with no companion but a poor lunatic whom I had met
on a small island, and who had attached himself to me. He followed me
everywhere, and loved me with that absurd and touching constancy of
which dogs and madmen alone are capable. My friend, whose insanity was
of a mild and harmless character, fancied himself the greatest genius in
the world. He was, moreover, under the impression that he suffered from
a gigantic, monstrous tooth. Of the two idiosyncr