“Now I lay me down to sleep.”
How “Ruby” Played.
Jud Brownin, when visiting New York, goes to hear Rubinstein, and gives the following description of his playing.
Well, sir, he had the blamedest, biggest, catty-cornedest pianner you ever laid eyes on; somethin’ like a distracted billiard-table on three legs. The lid was hoisted, and mighty
well it was. If it hadn’t been, he’d a tore the entire inside clean out and scattered ’em to the four winds of heaven.
Played well? You bet he did; but don’t interrupt me. When he first sit down, he ’peared to keer mighty little ’bout playin’, and wisht he hadn’t come. He tweedle-leedled a little on the treble, and twoodle-oodled some on the base—just foolin’ and boxin’ the thing’s jaws for bein’ in the way. And I says to a man settin’ next to me, says I, “What sort of fool playin’ is that?” And he says, “Heish!” But presently his hands commenced chasin’ one another up and down the keys like a parcel of rats scamperin’ through a garret very swift. Parts of it was sweet, though, and reminded me of a sugar squirrel turnin’ the wheel of a candy cage.
“Now,” I says to my neighbor, “he’s showin’ off. He thinks he’s a doin’ of it, but he ain’t got no idee, no plan of nothin’. If he’d play me a tune of some kind or other, I’d—”
But my neighbor says, “Heish,” very impatient.
I was just about to get up and go home, bein’ tired of that foolishness, when I heard a little bird wakin’ up away off in the woods, and call sleepy-like to his mate, and I looked up and see that Ruby was beginning to take some interest in his business, and I sit down again. It was the peep of day. The light came faint from the east, the breezes blowed gentle and fresh; some more birds waked up in the orchard, then some more in the trees near the house, and all begun singin’ together. People began to stir, and the gal opened the shutters. Just then the first beam of the sun fell upon the blossoms a little more, and it techt the roses on the bushes, and the next thing it was broad day; the sun fairly blazed, the birds sung like they’d split their little throats; all the leaves was movin’, and flashin’ diamonds of dew, and the whole wide world was bright and happy as a king. Seemed to me like there was a
good breakfast in every house in the land, and not a sick child or woman anywhere. It was a fine mornin’.