ker's name.
A whisper, a smothered chuckle, and a voice uttering these words: "He
must have begun as a piano-salesman," further disconcerted me. I fell on
to the seat and dropped my fingers upon the keys. Facing me was the Ary
Scheffer portrait of Chopin, and without knowing why I began the weaving
Prelude in D-major. My insides shook like a bowl of jelly; yet I was
outwardly as calm as the growing grass. My hands did not falter and the
music seemed to ooze from my wrists. I had not studied in vain
Thalberg's _Art of Singing on the Piano_. I finished. There was a
murmur; nothing more.

Then Liszt's voice cut the air:

"I expected Thalberg's tremolo study," he said. I took the hint and
arose.

He permitted me to kiss his hand, and, without stopping for my hat and
walking-stick in the antechamber, I went away to my lodgings. Later I
sent a servant for the forgotten articles, and the evening saw me in a
diligence miles from Weimar. But I had played for Liszt!

Now, the moral of all this is that my testimony furthermore adds to the
growing mystery of Franz Liszt. He heard hundreds of such pianists of my
caliber, and, while he never committed himself--for he was usually too
kind-hearted to wound mediocrity with cruel criticism, yet he seldom
spoke the unique word except to such men as Rubinstein, Tausig, Joseffy,
d'Albert, Rosenthal, or von Buelow. A miraculous sort of a man, Liszt was
ever pouring himself out upon the world, body, soul, brains, art,
purse--all were at the service of his fellow-beings. That he was imposed
upon is a matter of course; that he never did an unkind act in his life
proves him to have been Cardinal Newman's definition of a gentleman:
"One who never inflicts pain." And only now is the real significance of
the man as a composer beginning to be revealed. Like a comet he swept
the heavens of his early youth. He was a marvelous virtuoso who mistook
the piano for an orchestra and often confounded the orchestra with the
piano. As a pianist pure and simple I prefer Sigismund Thalberg; but, as
a composer, as a man, an extraordinary personality, Liszt quite filled
my firmament.

Setting aside those operatic arrangements and those clever, noisy
Hungarian Rhapsodies, what a wealth of piano-music has not this man
disclosed to us. Calmly read the thematic catalog of Breitkopf and
Haertel and you will be amazed at its variety. Liszt has paraphrased
inimitably songs by Schubert, Schumann, and Robert Franz, i