The tropical weather in the early part of last month set a dozen problems whizzing in my skull. Near my bungalow on the upper Wissahickon were several young men, camping out for the summer. One afternoon I was playing with great gusto a lovely sonata by Dussek—the one in A-flat—when I heard laughter, and, rising, I went to the window in an angry mood. Outside were two smiling faces, the patronizing faces of two young men.

"Well!" said I, rather shortly.

"It was like a whiff from the eighteenth century," said a stout, dark young fellow.

"A whiff that would dissipate the musical malaria of this," I cried, for I saw I had musicians to deal with. There was hearty laughter at this, and as young laughter warms the cockles of an old man's heart, I invited the pair indoors, and over some bottled ale—I despise your new-fangled slops—we discussed the Fine Arts. It is not the custom nowadays to capitalize the arts, and to me it reveals the want of respect in this headlong irreverent generation. To return to my mutton—to my sheep: they told me they were pianists from New York or thereabouts, who had conceived the notion of spending the summer in a tent.

"And what of your practising?" I slyly asked. Again they roared. "Why, old boy, you must be behind the times. We use a dumb piano the most part of the year, and have brought a three-octave one along." That set me going. "So you spend your vacation with the dumb, expecting to learn to speak, and yet you mock me because I play Dussek! Let me inform you, my young sirs, that this quaint, old-fashioned music, with its faint odor of the rococo, is of more satisfying musical value than all your modern gymnasiums. Of what use, pray, is your superabundant technics if you can't make music? Training your muscles and memorizing, you say? Fiddlesticks! The Well-tempered Clavichord for one hour a day is of more value to a pianist technically and musically than an army of mechanical devices.

"I never see a latter-day pianist on his travels but I am reminded of a comedian with his rouge-pot, grease-paints, wigs, arms, and costumes. Without them, what is the actor? Without his finger-boards and exercising machines, what is the pianist of today? He fears to stop a moment because his rival across the street will be able to play the double-thirds study of Chopin in quicker tempo. It all hinges on velocity. This season there will be a race between Rosenthal and Sauer, to see who can vomit the greater number of notes. Pleasing, laudable ambition, is it not? In my time a piano artist read, meditated, communed much with nature, slept well, ate and drank well, saw much of society, and all his life was reflected in his play. There was sensibility—above all, sensibility—the one quality absent from the performances of your new pianists. I don't mean super-sickly emotion, nor yet sprawling passion—the passion that tears the wires to tatters, but a poetic sensibility that infused every bar with humanity. To this was added a healthy tone that lifted the music far above anything morbid or depressing."

I continued in this strain until the dinner-bell rang, and I had to invite my guests to remain. Indeed, I was not sorry, for all old men need some one to talk to and at, else they fret and grow peevish. Besides, I was anxious to put my young masters to the test. I have a grand piano of good age, with a sounding-board like a fine-tempered fiddle. The instrument, an American one, I handle like a delicate thoroughbred horse, and, as my playing is accomplished by the use of my fingers and not my heels, the piano does not really betray its years.

We dined not sumptuously but liberally, and with our pipes and coffee went to the music room. The lads, excited by my criticisms and good cheer, were eager for a demonstration at the keyboard. So was I. I let them play first. This is what I heard: The dark-skinned youth, who looked like the priestly and uninteresting Siloti, sat down and began idly preluding. He had good fingers, but they were spoiled by a hammer-like touch and the constant use of forearm, upper-arm, and shoulder pressure. He called my attention to his tone. Tone! He made every individual wire jangle, and I trembled for my smooth, well-kept action. Then he began the B-minor Ballade of Liszt. Now, this particular piece always exasperates me. If there is much that is mechanical and conventional in the Thalberg fantasies, at least they are frankly sensational and admittedly for display. But the Liszt Ballade is so empty, so pretentious, so affected! One expects that something is about to occur, but it never comes. There are the usual chromatic modulations leading nowhere and the usual portentous roll in the bass. The composition works up to as much silly display as ever indulged in by Thalberg. My pianist splashed and spluttered, played chord-work straight from the shoulder, and when he had finished he cried out, "There is a dramatic close for you!"

"I call it mere brutal noise," I replied, and he winked at his friend, who went to the piano without my invitation. Now, I did not care for the looks of this one, and I wondered if he, too, would display his biceps and his triceps with such force. But he was a different brand of the modern breed. He played with a small, gritty tone, and at a terrible speed, a foolish and fantastic derangement of Chopin's D-flat Valse. This he followed, at a break-neck tempo, with Brahms' dislocation of Weber's C major Rondo, sometimes called "the perpetual movement." It was all very wonderful, but was it music?

"Gentlemen," I said, as I arose, pipe in hand, "you have both studied, and studied hard," and they settled themselves in their bamboo chairs with a look of resignation; "but have you studied well? I think not. I notice that you lay the weight of your work on the side of technics. Speed and a brutal quasi-orchestral tone seem to be your goal. Where is the music? Where has the airy, graceful valse of Chopin vanished? Encased, as you gave it, within hard, unyielding walls of double thirds, it lost all its spirit, all its evanescent hues. It is a butterfly caged. And do you call that music, that topsy-turvying of the Weber Rondo? Why, it sounds like a clock that strikes thirteen in the small hours of the night! And you, sir, with your thunderous and grandiloquent Liszt Ballade, do you call that pianoforte music, that constant striving for an aping of orchestral effects? Out upon it! It is hollow music—music without a soul. It is easier, much easier, to play than a Mozart sonata, despite all its tumbling about, despite all its notes. You require no touch-discrimination for such a piece. You have none. In your anxiety to compass a big tone you relinquish all attempts at finer shadings—at the nuance, in a word. Burly, brutal, and overloaded in your style, you make my poor grand groan without getting one vigorous, vital tone. Why? Because elasticity is absent, and will always be absent, where the fingers are not allowed to make the music. The springiest wrist, the most supple forearm, the lightest upper arm cannot compensate for the absence of an elastic finger-stroke. It is what lightens up and gives variety of color to a performance. You are all after tone-quantity and neglect touch—touch, the revelation of the soul."

"Yes, but your grand is worn out and won't stand any forcing of the tone," answered the Liszt Ballade, rather impudently. "Why the dickens do you want to force the tone?" said I, in tart accents. "It is just there we disagree," I yelled, for I was getting mad. "In your mad quest of tone you destroy the most characteristic quality of the pianoforte—I mean its lack of tone. If it could sustain tone, it would no longer be a pianoforte. It might be an organ or an orchestra, but not a pianoforte. I am after tone-quality, not tonal duration. I want a pure, bright, elastic, spiritual touch, and I let the tonal mass take care of itself. In an orchestra a full chord fortissimo is interesting because it may be scored in the most prismatic manner. But hit out on the keyboard a smashing chord and, pray, where is the variety in color? With a good ear you recognize the intervals of pitch, but the color is the same—hard, cold, and monotonous, because you have choked the tone with your idiotic, hammer-like attack. Sonorous, at least, you claim? I defy you to prove it. Where was the sonority in the metallic, crushing blows you dealt in the Liszt Ballade? There was, I admit, great clearness—a clearness that became a smudge when you used the damper pedal. No, my boys, you are on the wrong track with your orchestral-tone theory. You transform the instrument into something that is neither an orchestra nor a pianoforte. Stick to the old way; it's the best. Use plenty of finger pressure, elastic pressure, play Bach, throw dumb devices to the dogs, and, if you use the arm pressure at all, confine it to the forearm. That will more than suffice for the shallow dip of the keys. You can't get over the fact that the dip is shallow, so why attempt the impossible? For the amount of your muscle expenditure you would need a key dip of about six inches. Now, watch me. I shall, without your permission, and probably to your disgust, play a nocturne by John Field. Perhaps you never heard of him? He was an Irish pianist and, like most Irishmen of brains, gave the world ideas that were promptly claimed by others. But this time it was not an Englishman, but a Pole, who appropriated an Irishman's invention. This nocturne is called a forerunner to the Chopin nocturnes. They are really imitations of Field's, without the blithe, dewy sweetness of the Irishman's. First, let me put out the lamps. There is a moon that is suspended like a silver bowl over the Wissahickon. It is the hour for magic music."

Intoxicated by the sound of my own voice, I began playing the B-flat Nocturne of Field. I played it with much delicacy and a delicious touch. I am very vain of my touch. The moon melted into the apartment and my two guests, enthralled by the mystery of the night and my music, were still as mice. I was enraptured and played to the end. I waited for the inevitable compliment. It came not. Instead, there were stealthy snores. The pair had slept through my playing. Imbeciles! I awoke them and soon packed them off to their canvas home in the woods hard by. They'll get no more dinners or wisdom from me. I tell this tale to show the hopelessness of arguing with this stiff-necked generation of pianists. But I mean to keep on arguing until I die of apoplectic rage. Good-evening!