Page:Notes of a Pianist.djvu/26

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xvi
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER XV.
Elmira—Oswego—Leave for Scranton—Road obstructed—When Irishmen will cease drinking whiskey—Mr. Catlin, Theophile Gautier—Conversation one hundred miles apart—Arrive at Scranton—How an audience are kept in hopes—Concert at Binghamton—Small but charming audience—O pianists, be distrustful of amateurs—Newburg—Frightful tragedy—Not eighty persons at concert—A town in France where a concert never succeeds—Enthusiasm of audience in ratio of the receipts—Sympathy of amateurs—Anglo-Saxon imagination not sufficiently active—Leave Newburg—A Bloomer—Do not believe in women who assert their rights—Sour grapes—Liszt, Chopin, and the Germans—Chopin's mazourkas, etc., are epidemic in the United States—Schenectady—Detestable concert—Troy—Popular in some towns not at all in others—Concert at Brooklyn—Steinway and Chickering—Guelphs and Ghibellines—Poughkeepsie—Charming place—Amusing typographical errors—College Hill—Intelligent Yankee turns seminary into college—His success—Behrens's appetite and puns—Rutland—Very fine concert—'Last Hope'—Vermont marble quarries—Splendid country—Behrens's unlucky idea—Awakened by the sheriff—Arrive at Burlington—Carlo Patti missing—Very brilliant concert—Artist reflects humour of his audience—What I have often heard—Lake Champlain—The Bishop of Burlington and slavery—Bishop Potter on slavery—Poor Bible—Children and the Bible—What Puritanic anatomy only recognizes—Plattsburg—We are engaged by a speculator—Excellent hotel, Fouguet—Travelling in winter on the ice—Magnificent concert—Left again—Perceive we are approaching Canada—Canadian French—Two squaws—Montreal—Patti and the Secessionists—Nothing more odious than a hybrid patriot—"The Constitution as it was"—"Fools that you are"—Those who trade in a thing, generally those who use it the least—Behrens morose—A mad naturalist—His theory—My belief, the artist a victim—How ducks and geese are treated in Alsace—Artists like the ducks and geese—A truce to poor jokes—Behrens and the influence over him of the "eternal ham and eggs"—How a vagabond company dines 264