“I offered him a chair, and inquired how I could serve him.
“‘Yes.’
“‘Well, I will undertake to assist you in your strait. Allow me to see your programme,’ he continued, very patronizingly, waiting for us to make no reply whatever.
“‘Are you—that is, do you play rapidly, and at sight?’ asked madam.
“He replied only by a gesture, a sort of pitiful contempt for the ignorance of any person who should ask him such a question....
“Half past seven came, and we went on the stage. I do not know what the fellow’s prelude was; I was otherwise engaged; but his accompaniments were made up, and after he had heard the note sung to which he should have accompanied,—O, it was a horrid jargon, a consecutive blast of discords, a tempest of incomprehensibleness.
ENTHUSIASM.
“Madam caught her breath at the first pausing-place, and signalled him to stop. He took a side glance at her, misinterpreted her, and played on the louder. It became ludicrous in the extreme. He played the minor strains, or what should have been minor, in the major key. He only stopped when he saw us leave the stage. The audience cheered. He took it all as a compliment to himself as a pianist, stopped, and made his most profound obeisance to the house. They laughed and cheered the harder. He mistook it for an encore, bowed again, and returned to the piano. Then the house came down. They stamped, they laughed, they shouted. The boys in the gallery cat-called; the building fairly shook. I ran back to see what it was all about, and there was the pianist (?) beating furiously at the keys, the perspiration pouring in streams from his face. But his playing could only be seen to be appreciated; it could not be heard for the stamping of the audience. He finally desisted, and with repeated halts and smiles, he bowed himself off the stage.