while she played for him.

The concert-going public of Chicago still remembers the long, sallow,
discontented face of Madison Bowers. He seldom missed an evening
concert, and was usually to be seen lounging somewhere at the back of
the concert hall, reading a newspaper or review, and conspicuously
ignoring the efforts of the performers. At the end of a number he looked
up from his paper long enough to sweep the applauding audience with a
contemptuous eye. His face was intelligent, with a narrow lower jaw, a
thin nose, faded gray eyes, and a close-cut brown mustache. His hair was
iron-gray, thin and dead-looking. He went to concerts chiefly to satisfy
himself as to how badly things were done and how gullible the public
was. He hated the whole race of artists; the work they did, the wages
they got, and the way they spent their money. His father, old Hiram
Bowers, was still alive and at work, a genial old choirmaster in Boston,
full of enthusiasm at seventy. But Madison was of the colder stuff of
his grandfathers, a long line of New Hampshire farmers; hard workers,
close traders, with good minds, mean natures, and flinty eyes. As a boy
Madison had a fine barytone voice, and his father made great sacrifices
for him, sending him to Germany at an early age and keeping him abroad
at his studies for years. Madison worked under the best teachers, and
afterward sang in England in oratorio. His cold nature and academic
methods were against him. His audiences were always aware of the
contempt he felt for them. A dozen poorer singers succeeded, but Bowers
did not.

Bowers had all the qualities which go to make a good teacher--except
generosity and warmth. His intelligence was of a high order, his taste
never at fault. He seldom worked with a voice without improving it, and
in teaching the delivery of oratorio he was without a rival. Singers came
from far and near to study Bach and Handel with him. Even the fashionable
sopranos and contraltos of Chicago, St. Paul, and St. Louis (they were
usually ladies with very rich husbands, and Bowers called them the
"pampered jades of Asia") humbly endured his sardonic humor for the sake
of what he could do for them. He was not at all above helping a very
lame singer across, if her husband's check-book warranted it. He had a
whole bag of tricks for stupid people, "life-preservers," he called
them. "Cheap repairs for a cheap 'un," he used to say, but the husbands
never found the repairs very che