er hearing them played only once. I conversed
with him a number of years ago in New York, only to find that
intellectually and physically he was allied to the _cretin_.

Blind Tom's peculiar ability has led many hasty commentators to conclude
that music is a wholly separate mental faculty to be found particularly
in a more or less shiftless and irresponsible class of gifted but
intellectually limited human beings. The few cases of men and women
whose musical talent seems to eclipse their minds so that they remain in
utter darkness to everything else in life, should not be taken as a
basis for judging other artists of real genius and undisputed mental
breadth. I have in mind, however, the case of one pianist who is very
widely known and highly lauded, but who is very slightly removed from
the class of Blind Tom. A trained alienist, one acquainted with the
difference between the eccentricities which frequently accompany
greatness and the unconscious physical and psychical evidences of idiocy
which so clearly agree with the antics of the chimpanzee or the droll
Capuchin monkeys, might find in the performer to whom I refer a subject
for some very interesting, not to say startling reflections. Few have
ever been successful in inducing this pianist to talk upon any other
subject than music for more than a few minutes at a time. Another
pianist, who was distinguished as a Liszt pupil, and who toured America
repeatedly, seemed to have a hatred for the piano that amounted to an
obsession. "Look," he exclaimed, "I am its slave. It has sent me round
and round the world, night after night, year after year. It has cursed
me like a wandering Jew. No rest, no home, no liberty. Do you wonder
that I drink to forget it?"

A PATHETIC EXAMPLE

And drink he did in Bacchanalian measure! One time he gave an
unconscious exhibition of his technical ability that, while regrettable,
would have been of immense interest to psychologists who are seeking to
prove that music depends upon a separate operation of a special
"faculty." During his American tours I called frequently upon this
virtuoso for the purpose of investigating his method of playing. He was
rarely free from the influence of alcohol for more than a few hours at
a time. One morning it was necessary for me to see him professionally,
and when I found him at his hotel he was in a truly disgraceful
condition. I remember that he was unable to stand, from the fact that he
fell upon me wh