of the
Hungarian's genius, and forgot to credit the original. In music there
are no quotation marks. That is the reason borrowing has been in vogue
from Handel down.

The _Ring of the Nibelungs_ would not be heard today if Liszt had not
written its theme in his _Faust Symphony_. _Parsifal_ is altogether
Lisztian, and a German writer on musical esthetics has pointed out
recently, theme for theme, resemblance for resemblance, in this
Liszt-Wagner _Verhaeltniss_. Wagner owed everything to Liszt--from money
to his wife, success, and art. A wonderful white soul was Franz Liszt.
And he is only coming into his kingdom as a composer. Poor, petty,
narrow-minded humanity could not realize that because a man was a
pianist among pianists, he might be a composer among composers. I made
the error myself. I, too, thought that the velvet touch of Thalberg was
more admirable than the mailed warrior fist of Liszt. It is a mistake.
And now, plumped on my knees in Liszt's Bayreuth tomb, I acknowledge my
faults. Yes, he was a greater pianist than Thalberg. Can an
old-fashioned fellow say more?

XIII

WAGNER OPERA IN NEW YORK

With genuine joy I sit once more in my old arm-chair and watch the
brawling Wissahickon Creek, its banks draped with snow, while overhead
the sky seems so friendly and blue. I am at Dussek Villa, I am at home;
and I reproach myself for having been such a fool as ever to wander from
it. Being a fussy but conscientious old bachelor, I scold myself when I
am in the wrong, thus making up for the clattering tongue of an active
wife. As I once related to you, I recently went to New York, and there
encountered sundry adventures, not all of them of a diverting nature.
One you know, and it reeks in my memory with stale cigars, witless talk,
and all the other monotonous symbols of Bohemia. Ah, that blessed
Bohemia, whose coast no man ever explored except gentle Will
Shakespeare! It is no-man's-land; never was and never will be. Its
misty, alluring signals have shipwrecked many an artistic mariner,
and--but pshaw! I'm too old to moralize this way. Only young people
moralize. It is their prerogative. When they live, when they fathom good
and evil and their mysteries, charity will check their tongues, so I
shall say no more of Bohemia. What I saw of it further convinced me of
its undesirability, of its inutility.

And now to my tale, now to finish forever the story of my experiences in
Gotham! I declaimed violently a