artistic conscience. The latter word caused a
sleepy, fat man with spectacles to wake up.

"Conscience, who said conscience? Is there such a thing in art any
more?" I was delighted for the backing of a stranger, but he calmly
ignored me and continued:

"Newspapers rule the musical world, and woe betide the artist who does
not submit to his masters. Conscience, pooh-pooh! Boodle, lots of it,
makes most artistic reputations. A pianist is boomed a year ahead, like
Paderewski, for instance. Paragraphs subtly hinting of his enormous
success, or his enormous hair, or his enormous fingers, or his enormous
technic----"

"Give us a _fermata_ on your enormous story, Jenkins. Every one knows
you are disgruntled because the _Whiplash_ attacks your judgment." This
from another journalist.

Jenkins looked sourly at my friend Sledge, but that shy young person
behaved most nonchalantly. He whistled and offered Jenkins a cigar. It
was accepted. I was disgusted, and then they all fell to quarreling over
Tchaikovsky. I listened with amazement.

"Tchaikovsky," I heard, "Tchaikovsky is the last word in music. His
symphonies, his symphonic poems, are a superb condensation of all that
Beethoven knew and Wagner felt. He has ten times more technic for the
orchestra than Berlioz or Wagner, and it is a pity he was a suicide--"
"How," I cried, "Tchaikovsky a suicide?" They didn't even answer me.

"He might have outlived the last movement of that B-minor symphony, the
suicide symphony, and if he had we would have had another ninth
symphony." I arose indignant at such blasphemy, but was pushed back in
my seat by Sledge. "What a pity Beethoven did not live to hear a man who
carried to its utmost the expression of the emotions!" I now snorted
with rage, Sledge could no longer control me.

"Yes, gentlemen," I shouted; "utmost expression of the emotions, but
what sort of emotions? What sort, I repeat, of shameful, morbid
emotions?" The table was quiet again; a single word had caught it. "Oh,
Mr. Fogy, you are not so very Wissahickon after all, are you? You know
the inside story, then?" cried Sledge. But I would not be interrupted. I
stormed on.

"I know nothing about any story and don't care to know it. I come of a
generation of musicians that concerned itself little with the scandals
and private life of composers, but lots with their music and its
meanings." "Go it, Fogy," called out Sledge, hammering the table with
his seidl. "I believe tha