e man whose music I adore. I went through the Mozart
collection, saw all the old pictures, relics, manuscripts, and I
reverently fingered the harpsichord, the grand piano of the master. Even
the piece of "genuine Court Plaister" from London, and numbered 42 in
the catalogue, interested me. After I had read the visitors' book,
inscribed therein my own humble signature, after talking to death the
husband and wife who act as guardians of these Mozart treasures, I
visited the Mozart platz and saw the statue, saw Mozart's residence, and
finally--bliss of bliss--ascended the _Kapuzinberg_ to the Mozart
cottage, where the _Magic Flute_ was finished.

Later, several weeks later, when the Wagner municipal delirium had
passed, I left Salzburg with a sad heart and returned to Munich. There I
was allowed to bathe in Mozart's music and become healed. I heard an
excellent performance of his _Cosi Fan Tutti_ at the _Residenztheater_,
an ideal spot for this music. With the accompaniment of an orchestra of
thirty, more real music was made and sung than the whole _Ring Cycle_
contains. Some day, after my death, without doubt, the world will come
back to my way of thinking, and purge its eyes in the Pierian spring of
Mozart, cleanse its vision of all the awful sights walled by the
dissonantal harmonies of Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, and Richard
Strauss.

I fear that this letter will enrage my grandson; I care not. If he
writes, do not waste valuable space on his "copy." I inclose a picture
of Mozart that I picked up in Salzburg. If you like it, you have my
permission to reproduce it. I am here once more in Mozartland!

V

OLD FOGY DISCUSSES CHOPIN

Since my return from the outskirts of Camden, N. J., where I go fishing
for planked shad in September, I have been busying myself with the
rearrangement of my musical library, truly a delectable occupation for
an old man. As I passed through my hands the various and beloved
volumes, worn by usage and the passage of the years, I pondered after
the fashion of one who has more sentiment than judgment; I said to
myself:

"Come, old fellow, here they are, these friends of the past forty years.
Here are the yellow and bepenciled Bach _Preludes and Fugues_, the
precious 'forty-eight'; here are the Beethoven Sonatas, every bar of
which is familiar; here are--yes, the Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann
Sonatas [you notice that I am beginning to bracket the batches]; here
are Mendelssohn's w