social function--sometimes a circus,
never a temple of art. The final, the infallible test is the maintenance
of an orchestra. New York has no permanent orchestra; though there is an
attempt to make of the New York Symphony Society a worthy rival to the
Philadelphia and Boston orchestras. So much for my enjoyment in the
larger forms of music--symphony, oratorio and opera.

But my visit was not without compensations. I attended piano concerts by
Eugen d'Albert, Ignace Jan Paderewski, and Rafael Joseffy. Pachmann I
had heard earlier in the season in my own home city. So in one season I
listened to four out of six of the world's greatest pianists. And it was
very stimulating to both ears and memory. It also affords me an
opportunity to preach for you a little sermon on Touch (Tone and Technic
were the respective themes of my last two letters), which I have had in
my mind for some time. Do not be alarmed. I say "sermon," but I mean
nothing more than a comparison of modern methods of touch, as
exemplified by the performances of the above four men, with the style of
touch employed by the pianists of my generation: Thalberg, Liszt,
Gottschalk, Tausig, Rubinstein, Von Buelow, Henselt, and a few others.

Pachmann is the same little wonder-worker that I knew when he studied
many years ago in Vienna with Dachs. This same Dachs turned out some
finished pupils, though his reputation, curiously enough, never equalled
that of the over-puffed Leschetizky, or Epstein, or Anton Door, all
teachers in the Austrian capital. I recall Anthony Stankowitch, now in
Chicago, and Benno Schoenberger, now in London, as Dachs' pupils.
Schoenberger has a touch of gold and a style almost as jeweled as
Pachmann's--but more virile. It must not be forgotten that Pachmann has
fine nerves--with such an exquisite touch, his organization must be of
supernal delicacy--but little muscular vigor. Consider his narrow
shoulders and slender arms--height of figure has nothing to do with
muscular incompatibility; d'Albert is almost a dwarf, yet a colossus of
strength. So let us call Pachmann, a survival of an older school, a
charming school. Touch was the shibboleth of that school, not tone; and
technic was often achieved at the expense of more spiritual qualities.
The three most _beautiful_ touches of the piano of the nineteenth
century were those of Chopin, Thalberg, and Henselt. Apart from any
consideration of other gifts, these three men--a Pole, a Hebrew, and a