Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1892 — Playing: to Eiszt. [ARTICLE]

Playing: to Eiszt.

An anoynymous contributor to the Atlantic Monthly says that several summers of her girlhood were passed in an old villa at Castle Gandolfo, which before 1870 was the summer residence of the Pope, near Rome. A Polish lady, who occupied the lower floor of the house, had a piano in her parlor, and very kindly gave the little girl permission to use it every day during the hour of her own afternoon drive. I was proud of being allowed to learn some little pieces, particularly a duet from “Lucia di Lammermoor,” which I looked upon as a masterpiece of subtlety and execution. One afternoon I was thumping away at that morsel, with my eight-year-old hands stretched at last to the full extent of an octave and my eight-year-old mind happy in the thought of having mastered all the technical difficulties of the composition, when the door opened softly, and' I looked up to see a white-haired man, with a handsome, kindly, and to me very venerable countenance, standing beside me. I stopped playing in alarm, but he motioned me not to move, and said gently, in Italian: “Go on, my little girl, never, mind me. I should like to hear that piece over again.” Half reassured by the kindness of his manner, I began again nervously at “Lucia,” and somehow managed, to get through it. “It is not bad,” said my listener. He took hold of my hand and showed me how the notes should be struck and what I must aim at in practicing. “And now, if you like, I will play to you,” he said, and sat down and played “Lucia” to show me how it should be done. From that he went on to other music, very different, hut wonderfully grand, it seemed to me, and so on and on, till, stopping at last, he saw me standing there, with eyes big with wonder and full of tears. “You have a soul for music, child,” he said; “study hard, and will get ou.” At that moment my father’s voice called from the stairway. I gathered up my book to go. The old gentleman patted me on the head as I thanked him shyly, and I ran away full of wonder and excitement. Afterward I heard and later still I understood that the musical treat of that afternoon was a privilege which many would have envied me; that the piano in the tapestried salon had vibrated under the touch of genius; that I had been listening to the great pianist, the Abbe Liszt, and what is appalling to think of, had been playing to him.