e usual repertory of restaurant music followed, varied by a charming
bit from Massenet's "Manon," then little known in this country. After we
paid our check, Cressida took out one of her visiting cards and wrote
across the top of it: _"We thank you for the unusual music and the
pleasure your playing has given us."_ She folded the card in the middle,
and asked the waiter to give it to the director of the orchestra. Pausing
at the door, while the porter dashed out to call a cab, we saw, in the
wall mirror, a pair of wild black eyes following us quite despairingly
from behind the palms at the other end of the room. Cressida observed as
we went out that the young man was probably having a hard struggle. "He
never got those clothes here, surely. They were probably made by a
country tailor in some little town in Austria. He seemed wild enough to
grab at anything, and was trying to make himself heard above the dishes,
poor fellow. There are so many like him. I wish I could help them all! I
didn't quite have the courage to send him money. His smile, when he bowed
to us, was not that of one who would take it, do you think?"

"No," I admitted, "it wasn't. He seemed to be pleading for recognition. I
don't think it was money he wanted."

A week later I came upon some curious-looking manuscript songs on the
piano in Cressida's music room. The text was in some Slavic tongue with
a French translation written underneath. Both the handwriting and the
musical script were done in a manner experienced, even distinguished. I
was looking at them when Cressida came in.

"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed. "I meant to ask you to try them over. Poppas
thinks they are very interesting. They are from that young violinist,
you remember,--the one we noticed in the restaurant that evening. He sent
them with such a nice letter. His name is Blasius Bouchalka (Bou-kal-ka),
a Bohemian."

I sat down at the piano and busied myself with the manuscript, while
Cressida dashed off necessary notes and wrote checks in a large square
checkbook, six to a page. I supposed her immersed in sumptuary
preoccupations when she suddenly looked over her shoulder and said,
"Yes, that legend, _Sarka_, is the most interesting. Run it through a few
times and I'll try it over with you."

There was another, "_Dans les ombres des forets tristes_", which I
thought quite as beautiful. They were fine songs; very individual, and
each had that spontaneity which makes a song seem inevitable