istinct emotions--the first a wearing tension lest some one should
come to interrupt, and the second that I did not deserve this, that I
had not earned it.... The instrument had that excellence of the finely
evolved things. It seemed to me that the workmen had done something that
money should not be able to buy. One does not buy such voices and genius
for the assembly of tones. It seemed to me that I should have spent
years of study to be worthy of this. There is a difference, as deep as
life, in the listening and in the doing. Something of the plan of it
all, is in that difference. I found that the spirit I brought was more
designed to be worthy of this happiness, than any money could be. I
found that a man does not do real work for money. That which he takes
for his labour is but the incident of bread and hire, but the real thing
he puts into a fine task, must be given. One after another, for many
decades, workmen had given their best to perfect this thing that
charmed me. Every part from Bach's scale to the pneumatic boxes in the
making of a piano and player had been drawn from the spirit of things by
men who made themselves ready to receive. They had toiled until they
were fine; then they received.

It was something the same as one feels when he has learned to read; when
the first messages come home to him from black and white, and he
realises that all the world's great literature is open to his hand.
Again the great things are gifts. You cannot pay in matter for a
spiritual thing; you can only pay in kind. I saw that the brutalisation
of the player-piano resulted from people who thought they had earned the
whole right, because they paid a price; that they did not bring the awe
and reverence to their interpretations, and therefore they got nothing
but jingle and tinkle and din.

I didn't know the buttons and levers, but I had an idea how a certain
slow movement should sound, if decently played. In two hours the
instrument gradually fitted itself to this conception. It was ready in
every detail; only I was to blame for the failures. The excitement and
exultation is difficult to tell, as I entered deeper and deeper into the
genius of the machine. It answered, not in _tempo_ and volume alone, but
in the pedal relaxations and throbs of force. I thought of the young
musicians who had laboured half their lives to bring to concert pitch
the _Waldstein_ or the _Emperor_, and that I had now merely to
punctuate and read fort