mooned around looking for old landmarks that had vanished--twenty years
since I saw Gotham, and then Theodore Thomas was king.

I felt quite miserable and solitary, and, being hungry, went to a
much-talked-of cafe, Luechow's by name, on East Fourteenth Street. I saw
Steinway and Sons across the street and reflected with sadness that
the glorious days of Anton Rubinstein were over, and I still a useless
encumberer of the earth. Then an arm was familiarly passed through mine
and I was saluted by name.

"You! why I thought you had passed away to the majority where Dussek
reigns in ivory splendor."

I turned and discovered my young friend--I knew his grandfather years
ago--Sledge, a pianist, a bad pianist, and an alleged critic of music.
He calls himself "a music critic." Pshaw! I was not wonderfully warm in
my greeting, and the lad noticed it.

"Never mind my fun, Mr. Fogy. Grandpa and you playing Moscheles'
_Hommage a Fromage_, or something like that, is my earliest and most
revered memory. How are you? What can I do for you? Over for a day's
music? Well, I represent the _Weekly Whiplash_ and can get you tickets
for anything from hell to Hoboken."

Now, if there is anything I dislike, it is flippancy or profanity, and
this young man had both to a major degree. Besides, I loathe the modern
musical journalist, flying his flag one week for one piano house and
scarifying it the next in choice Billingsgate.

"Oh, come into Luechow's and eat some beer," impatiently interrupted my
companion, and, like the good-natured old man that I am, I was led like
a lamb to the slaughter. And how I regretted it afterward! I am cynical
enough, forsooth, but what I heard that afternoon surpassed my
comprehension. I knew that artistic matters were at a low ebb in New
York, yet I never realized the lowness thereof until then. I was
introduced to a half-dozen smartly dressed men, some beardless, some
middle-aged, and all dissipated looking. They regarded me with
curiosity, and I could hear them whispering about my clothes, I got off
a few feeble jokes on the subject, pointing to my C-sharp minor colored
collar. A yawn traversed the table.

"Ah, who has the courage to read Hoffmann, nowadays?" asked a
boyish-looking rake. I confessed that I had. He eyed me with an amused
smile that caused me to fire up. I opened on him. He ordered a round of
drinks. I told him that the curse of the generation was its cold-blooded
indifference, its lack of