re at all, confine it to the forearm. That
will more than suffice for the shallow dip of the keys. You can't get
over the fact that the dip is shallow, so why attempt the impossible?
For the amount of your muscle expenditure you would need a key dip of
about six inches. Now, watch me. I shall, without your permission, and
probably to your disgust, play a nocturne by John Field. Perhaps you
never heard of him? He was an Irish pianist and, like most Irishmen of
brains, gave the world ideas that were promptly claimed by others. But
this time it was not an Englishman, but a Pole, who appropriated an
Irishman's invention. This nocturne is called a forerunner to the Chopin
nocturnes. They are really imitations of Field's, without the blithe,
dewy sweetness of the Irishman's. First, let me put out the lamps. There
is a moon that is suspended like a silver bowl over the Wissahickon. It
is the hour for magic music."

Intoxicated by the sound of my own voice, I began playing the _B-flat
Nocturne_ of Field. I played it with much delicacy and a delicious
touch. I am very vain of my touch. The moon melted into the apartment
and my two guests, enthralled by the mystery of the night and my music,
were still as mice. I was enraptured and played to the end. I waited for
the inevitable compliment. It came not. Instead, there were stealthy
snores. The pair had slept through my playing. Imbeciles! I awoke them
and soon packed them off to their canvas home in the woods hard by.
They'll get no more dinners or wisdom from me. I tell this tale to show
the hopelessness of arguing with this stiff-necked generation of
pianists. But I mean to keep on arguing until I die of apoplectic rage.
Good-evening!

XVI

TCHAIKOVSKY

A day in musical New York!

Not a bad idea, was it? I hated to leave the country, with its rich
after-glow of Summer, its color-haunted dells, and its pure, searching
October air, but a paragraph in a New York daily, which I read quite by
accident, decided me, and I dug out some good clothes from their
fastness and spent an hour before my mirror debating whether I should
wear the coat with the C-sharp minor colored collar or the one with the
velvet cuffs in the sensuous key of E-flat minor. Being an admirer of
Kapellmeister Kreisler (there's a writer for you, that crazy Hoffmann!),
I selected the former. I went over on the 7.30 A. M., P. R. R., and
reached New York in exactly two hours. There's a _tempo_ for you! I